Safer cars make drivers more dangerous

[jag]

For roads we have the phrase "build it and they will come". Any increase in road capacity will over a (relatively short) period in time be matched by an increase in cars, and thus the street or area just as congested as before.

Now it seems like a similar statement might hold for automobile safety devices. As the below article implies, technically improving the cars does not help. Drivers will feel safer and simply drive less safely until the same accident rate is obtained.

HOW WE DRIVE; Roads Are Safer; Cars Are Safer. Drivers? Forget It.
By John M. Broder

Dr. Evans, who is the president of the International Traffic Medicine Association, contends that so-called safety devices in cars, particularly air bags, have had an insidious and deadly effect on driver behavior.

He said that as recently as the late 1970s the United States had the safest highways, using the measure of traffic deaths per 100,000 registered vehicles. Today, he said, the United States is in 12th place and sinking.

“If the United States had simply matched Canada’s performance over that period,” Dr. Evans said, “annual U.S. fatalities this year would be 28,000, rather than more than 41,000.”

He said that since the mid-60’s, American have spent billions of dollar seeking the perfect technological fix to prevent fatalities. Their solutions, the air bag and other “passive” devices, have only compounded the problem. Other industrial nations, Dr. Evans said, have pursued a more balance approach -- better and early driver education, stricter enforcement of traffic and seat-belt laws, use of cameras to detect speeding and red-light running and campaigns against aggressive driving.

“We have just receive the wonderful good news that the air bag is killing fewer people than it used to,” he said. “When was that an advertisement for a safety device, that it’s killing fewer people than it used to?”

Dr. Evans said that the air bag and other safety devices had the same effect collectively as advances in cardiac medicine. Angioplasty and bypass surgery have not decreased the rate of death from heat disease, he said and might have convinced people that there is a technological “cure” for the unhealthy behaviors that lead to heart attacks.

“We see American collectively driving a couple of miles an hour faster because of a false sense of security,” he said. “And that collective increase in speed more than washes away the alleged benefit of air bags.”

http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm58.htm#_Toc65190624

 

[TylerDurden]

plus:

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION:
U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving
By MATT RICHTEL
New York Times
Published: July 20, 2009

In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel.

They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways.

But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.

On Tuesday, the full body of research is being made public for the first time by two consumer advocacy groups, which filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the documents. The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen provided a copy to The New York Times, which is publishing the documents on its Web site.

continues> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/technology/21distracted.html?_r=1

 

[dak664]

I have been saying that for years. How about switching the side of the road everybody drives on once a month, would it cause more accidents or less? Can't remember which country it was, maybe Finland, but switching resulted in fewer accidents for the next month. I expect there were fewer cell phone conversations too!

 

[spinningmagnets]

Down througfh the years the federal government (through the DOT) has tried to make us safer, with mixed results.

In the 1950's the mandate of providing lapbelts as an "option" resulted in more lives saved, though there was an increase of heads hitting the dashboard.

Shoulder-belts resulted in a significant increase in safety (fewer heads hitting dashboards).

Air-bags have been a mixed bag (couldn't help the pun) Clearly many people have been saved in a head-on collision by an air-bag (first the driver, then quickly followed by both front seats) and now we find ourselves in a position where in order to build and sell a car in North America, you must have front and side air-bags for everyone.

A few children and small/light adults have been killed in a non-fatal slow-speed collision by a violent air-bag deployment snapping their head backwards (oops!). So now the DOT adds switches to allow the owner to turn off an airbag for children/light-adults. They are also asking for weight-switches to be mandated into the seats so the air-bags are automatically adjusted to the weight of the occupant (light/medium/heavy)

The "third eye" brake light reduced the number of fender-benders and also the severity of those that still occurred. (Yeeeaaaaah!)

Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) did not help most people at all. It did help cautious drivers who had to drive in the rain and snow...but most people depended on ABS to save them, and as a result they drive recklessly. If you drive too fast and follow too close, ABS statistically doesn't help the masses. A good option for the cautious, but as a federally enforced social policy for everyone, it fails due to unco-operative drivers.

Rear-wheel ABS is quite valuable in all conditions, it keeps the car pointed straight instead of spinning-out. The driver knows he must depend on the front discs with no ABS and they drive more cautiously.

The intersection speeder camera goes through several phases. Initially most local drivers don't see it, and get a speeding/ran-a-red-light ticket in the mail. Then there is a rash of collisions when ticketed drivers slam on their brakes due to a yellow light (they get rear-ended). Then the public in general stops speeding and running lights so that the city no longer gets significant revenue from cited drivers. The city then maintains cameras at major intersections and then removes them from all other intersections in order to bring in more money...

Because complete public safety is too expensive.

 

[v_tach]

Just put a big metal spike in the center of all steering wheels.

 

[Link]

Just put a big metal spike in the center of all steering wheels.

This.

And my suggestion of requiring the besting of a certain lap time (determined by care make and model) to get your license still sounds pretty appealing to me...

 

[dogman dan]

I think it's more related to a lack of cops. When I got my first licence for a motorcycle back in 1970, if you ran three lights you got one ticket. If you drove over the speed limit all day, you got a ticket. Now you watch while cops watch 6 people turn left at a red light and do nothing. Cops routinely drive everywhere 20 mph over the speed limit, etc etc. In america anyway, you have to MAKE us obey traffic laws. Nowdays, at least here, everybody does what they want, and go years without getting a ticket. The safer cars may play a role, but most of the dead ones on the news every night were drunk or hit by a drunk. The motorcycle riders aren't affected by this safer car thing, and they had two suicycle riders kill themselves in one night last night, hauling ass drunk with no helmet. I'd say that's the equivilant of a spike in the steering wheel and yet they still go like lemmings off a cliff.

 

[Matt Gruber]

Just put a big metal spike in the center of all steering wheels.

my 61 has the spike. i don't drive it much anymore.
.
if everyone drove old designs, no safety devices, the death rate would soar. Because many are texting and on phone etc. They don't make any such decision about safety; they just MUST multitask, at any risk. Addicted like a gambler or crack addict.
.

 

[v_tach]

I remember many years ago when it was alleged restaurant drive-through windows dramatically increased the accident rate. Damn rednecks with their giant extended side-view mirrors irresponsibly sucking down quarter pounders and large Cokes while behind the wheel... we must stop such scourge.

 

[deronmoped]

I say we go back to the cars with drum brakes, no power steering or brakes, no sway bars, underpowered engines, two speed tranmissions, low performance tires...

The more you increase the performance/perceived safety of peoples cars the faster people go, the longer they wait to slam on the brakes, the less attention they pay to the road and other drivers...

Whatever happened to the living room on wheels, Americans used to be into huge "cars" with seats as large as a couch, comfort was king, now it is all about performance. Go, Go, Go.

Deron.

 

[Matt Gruber]

the main reason i've kept my 67 galaxie is that the front bench seat is wide enough to lie down and take a nap at a rest stop on long trips. i refuse to buy a new car without this feature LOL