Cars are safer now, but is Driving?

Staying alive is hard work, everything is trying to harm us, we are constantly watching our step, we watch what we eat, we take precautions taking showers, crossing the street, having someone else use the ladder that it is jimmy-rigged on top of books, life is dangerous, take driving for example.  Every five seconds or in the amount of time to read this sentence a car accident has occurred. According to the US General Service Administration Office of Motor Vehicle Management or the GSA, 6,420,000 accidents happen a year resulting in 115 deaths a day all of which are 98% are human error.  So, how is this possible with all the mandatory technological advances in cars vs cars 50 plus years ago? Are cars actually safer now than in the past when more human interaction was involved?  It is my theory and one that I wish to express that cars are safer now, but maybe not driving. Let’s put a pin in that for minute.

 Throughout history most if not all humans have always agreed on one ethos, one belief, to prolong life, to find ways of extending the one unsurmountable truth that we will all perish.  Before real advancements in medicine, technology, healthcare, knowledge in foods, exercise, preventive safety was the best and still probably one of the best ways to stay alive. Preventing yourself from getting hurt is a great way to live. Thousands to even hundreds of years ago getting hurt was really life or death.  Keeping yourself further away from harm or protecting oneself in potential harmful scenario is something humans have strived for throughout the ages. Armor was one of the technologies if you had no other choice but to be put in harm’s way was your highest percentage for survival. Safety in cars is by no means any different.

 When cars first came around very few people could own one, it was mostly the wealthy elite, but as time progressed cars became more accessible to the public mostly due to Henry Ford cutting the production costs with his invention of the assembly line. Because of this more people started to drive them and therefore more accidents would occur. Pretty logical.  Fast forward to about the 1950s where cars were a way of life, a sense of freedom and independence, as a result of this, huge numbers of crashes and fatalities were happening at an alarming rate.  Around this time car manufactures started to implement technology features, safety being one of them as a way to showcase how advanced their car was and to show the public they cared for their well-being, but really wanted them as returning and repeat customer. One of the first, and in my opinion the most important and beneficial if used correctly was the seatbelt. Now seatbelts were not some startling new invention, they had been around since the late 1800s. A man by the name of George Caylay invented a belt that would go across your lap and strap pilots in and prevent them from falling out of their gliders during flight. Many years later Edward J. Claghorn took that lap belt concept a bit further and had patented the first seatbelt for taxis in New York City, something that has yet to catch on there. Travel some 3000 miles west and you arrive in Pasadena, CA, where in 1946 C. Hunter Shelden created a neurological study due to the high number of head injuries related to car accidents. This led his team to create the retractable seatbelt in the mid 1950s. The awareness was out there, the technology was around, everything was in place for the public, it just needed to be implemented into vehicles, By 1949 car manufacturer called “Nash” offered seatbelts as a standard factory option in all its cars. However, with most new inventions that are created for the benefit of safety, people were hesitant and skeptical. It turns out they were so resistant that customers requested the seatbelts be uninstalled, of the 40,000 Nash vehicles sold only a 1,000 were sold with seatbelts. I can just imagine the customer saying, “Can I have the one that is less safe, it clashes with me living longer.” Now, I get it, most of the buyers at this time were in there 30-60s and had already lived through one or in some cases two World Wars, probably proficient on a horse which did not have a seat belt either and just thought it was propaganda tool or something. They had lived this long without one, why would they need one now, type of mentally. Human stubbornness at its finest. But it would not be until Niles Bohlin, a Swedish engineer in 1959 who really grasped the importance and took the world by storm with his idea of the three-point seatbelt specifically designed for Volvo.  This design is considered one of the most important innovations in automobile history, it really leaped forward the world of safety in the automotive industry.  Volvo saw the importance and crucial impact it would have on the world and decided to share the patent to every manufacture for free.  Gotta love those Swedes. 

Pictured: Niles Bohlin and his three point seatbelt

So why the cliff notes on the seatbelt? Today, roughly 75-some-odd years later and countless educational classes, readings, news reports, stories, advertisements, marketing strategies, crash test simulations and recreations, the number one reason why people are killed in car accidents is because they are not wearing their seatbelt. Every 13 minutes a person dies in the US for not wearing their seatbelt, that is roughly 110 people a day. Take a minute an actually think of that. You might be thinking well that can’t be exactly true, people die because they are speeding or drunk, and you would be correct. But not wearing the seatbelt is essentially the result, but the causes are interrelated.  Can you guess what is leading the pack? Yup, alcohol. Alcohol consumes about 30%-35% for the cause of accidents, excessive speeding which results in about 20-25%, not paying attention or distraction (eating, cell phone, screens, and so fourth) is about another third of the pie.  In the distraction category the phone easily surpasses anything else. That does not necessarily mean phone in hand talking, it also means hands free, texting, checking out sites, videos and directions. “Let’s watch videos while we drive that seems logical and safe.” Sounds absurd, but it’s true. Studies have found that talking on your phone, even hands free is the same as driving with 0.08 amount of alcohol in your system, your judgment and motor skills may not be impaired at same caliber but it’s your ability to focus and the higher level of distraction that keeps you from driving safe. Taking your eyes off the road and utilizing touchscreens it also a massive contributor vs the physical buttons which have muscle memory attributes that helps you keep your eyes on the road. Central displays on vehicles are becoming larger and more involved, some rivaling IMAX theaters. Trailing the pack is the idiotic act of tailgating, the assumption the other drivers are going to do what they are supposed to do, and or not checking the traffic when crossing lanes or reading signs finish up the list. Remember all of this happens while drivers are not wearing a seatbelt. Look at those numbers again, they are inexcusable for human stubbornness or laziness for not wearing a strap across your body. The process itself takes maybe five seconds and one to two movements.  Hell in the 80s, and the heyday of the 90s they cut that time and movement in half for people by placing in the automatic seatbelt. That’s right a seatbelt that strapped you in once you sat down, problem solved right, not exactly.

This all started during the Carter administration (this is the late 70’s for you younger folk) where they implemented a law that would require the entire auto industry having automated seats belts or airbags by the mid-80s, a push forward toward safety during a time where less than 20% of drivers and passengers were wearing them. There was of course pushback from the auto industry due to the fear that consumers would refrain from buying their product (Nash cars ring a bell), oddly enough the IIHS also was not in favor of this legislation for automated seatbelts, as they argued airbags were far superior, which is true when used together with seatbelts, not as an independent replacement.  After pushback and delays most of the auto manufactures decided to go with the automated seats belts over the airbags mainly because it was more cost effective on the front and backend. However, by the 90’s automated seatbelts were everywhere and people were not thrilled with the function or design. For those of you who are not familiar, the door would close and seat belt would be attached to a track and follow the door frame up to the shoulder or B-pillar securing you in. Simple enough right, you sit down and you are strapped in what is not to like? Well, people would still have to manually latch the belt across their lap. As we have proven and know, people being stubborn and lazy disregarded this movement and thought, “hey I am already secure with this shoulder strap.” Not like it was the most arduous movement in human history that required months of training and only the most coordinated of humans to perform. As it turns out humans are idiots when it comes to safety once again. Without the lap belt secured the system does not work effectively, and was actually was more dangerous. The only possible silver lining I can see for the ignorance and stupidity of not latching the belt and for the automated seatbelt was, that people were so used having the feeling of the belt across them that they missed the sense of security and feel of the belt that traffic fatalities went down. As the automatic seatbelt was being phased out around 1998, when all vehicles were mandated to have dual front airbags, one could argue the two safety features, the seatbelt and the airbag were working in tandem, so in that regard the automated seatbelt could be seen as a success? 

So back to the original question, are cars safer now? Is driving? The obvious answer is cars are much safer now. With Advancement Driver Assistance System (ADAS - preventive braking, traction control, cameras, warning lights, sleep deprivation systems, advances in brake systems, preventive rollover, handling, eye tracking systems, and so forth), crumple zones, construction of the car itself, materials used, and minimizing window sizes to reinforce stress points. But this really doesn’t answer the question, all this tells us is that cars are safer now but is driving? 

Before we go any further let’s chat about what we do know, where the industry is going with EVs, technology, and fully autonomous vehicles. We live in a world now where autonomous vehicles and systems are in place and have done wonders with efficiency, productivity, travel, and safety for other forms of transportation. Aviation is the best example of this with the efficiency and safety, 90% of a commercial or private jet is automated with the exception of take-off and landing where human interaction needs to take over but once in the air the plane flies itself, the same can be said with trains and oil tankers. It is possible to have this sense of security in the auto world as long as all the cars are in coordination with each other. Yes, there are outside factors that planes, trains, and tankers do not have to deal with which cars have to and on a more intimiate and microlevel. Autonomous only works if all cars are on the same network, new and old cars.  Some years ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA did a study on 14 different technologies on basic safety factors; seatbelts, airbags, traction control, etc. Over a span of 50 years, they concluded that with just those 14 basic safety technologies, 613,501 lives would be saved. In keeping with those numbers, hypothetically in a 15-year span, 40,000 lives would be saved.  What does this tell us? It tells us we know that the potential is pretty much limitless with technology but, if there is a ying there is always yang which has to be talked about.  With new technologies new risks arise especially technologies that are controlled by computers or AI.  With computer-based technology, you have software risks, machine learning, mechanical turk data misinterpreted, hacking, bugs, all which could cause catastrophic issues and accidents.  In my opinion and I could be completely alone here, hackers might be largest concern. Nothing is impenetrable, email accounts, bank accounts, highly secured networks, companies, they have all have been breached at one point even if it was for a few minutes or seconds. Who is to say hackers won’t penetrate a network of vehicles, take control of them and shut them down or cause them all not to drive or even worse drive into each other causing a massive pile up disrupting the fragile economic auto industry and killing hundreds in the process.

 Right now, ADAS which is in most cars is the best foot forward and pretty much the blueprint going forward for antonymous driving to happen.  There are about five levels or stages when it comes to ADAS, the first being humans who are responsible for the vehicle and the environment and everything that happens from turning on the car to turning it off, all the way to level five which takes away the pedals, steering wheel, and windshield, it monitors the environment, takes full control of the vehicle, pretty much anything that a human would and could control and puts everything into the “hands” of the algorthym in computer. Right now, we are about at level two when it comes to driver assistance in vehicles, (some cars such as the AFEELA created by Honda and Sony is a level 3) the car can do some of the tasks but when it needs you it will let you know.  So why not jump to level four or five vs going through the steps? Well, for starters every car on the road has to be a level four or five, and there are about 200-300 million cars on the road in the US alone and it takes roughly 10-12 years to penetrate the herd with new technology so jumping to the last level is just not feasible or realistic. Not discussing retro fitting the older cars with the needed technology or cost to keep up. It is basically a massive infostructure problem. Implementing steps of technology and safety in cars is a comfortable segway for people to adjust to the changes in the car industry. People are learning the technology, seeing the data, and trusting the program will do what it is supposed to do. Eventually as time goes on people will adjust and lack of better word “not care” that they are not driving as much or not want too by that time the fleet or heard will be at level five. Another issue is that fully autonomous vehicles are not there yet, they have done wonders for demonstration programs but they still need to be proven on a smaller scale before they reach the big leagues. ADAS is the answer, we have seen the results. The last and probably the largest hurdle is the democratizing safety.  This is when you get all of automakers, place them in a room with coffee and donuts have them agree on a safety technology, have them implement a standard ADAS safety option on all their vehicles no matter the cost of the vehicle. This gets everyone on board with moving forward, shows the public that all the manufactures are on board working together to better their cars for the safety of the consumer. People are becoming more used to the technology and are wanting it in their cars. 

EV’s are a great example of the five steps.  Throughout the years of the auto industry EV cars have sprung up either by small private companies showing off their technology or large corporations showing to the public we can make one if we wanted and GM expressed that with the EV1 back in 1996. There is great debate on why GM sabotaged, excuse me, cancelled the EV1. Do yourself a favor and watch “Who Killed the Electric Car?” It was not until Telsa came around with the roadster and the Model S that lighting was captured in the bottle by consumers.  The technology of electric cars, even though they had been around for a century was new to the consumer market and yet people were hesitant and unsure once again. Why? That is for a different article. But once Tesla caught some wind it never slowed down. Because of their innovation and success, people and manufactures started to visualize and conceive the potential of technology in vehicles for the future. If you enjoy EVs or not, they did change the landscape of the auto industry and actually made ICE much more efficient as well. I am trying not to get to sidetracked here. Having said that, one of the biggest concerns with ADAS cars which effects all modern EV and ICE is the weight. It is no secret that cars now are bigger and heavier than they were twenty, ten, or even five years ago. With each new model they grow in size to keep up with demand and the competition so they have that extra 0.4 inch in should room in the back seat which is so important. One of the main reasons why they are growing in weight is because of the all the computers controlling all the ADAS. With more computers also comes larger and heavier batteries. Cars now are heavy beasts. Even manufactures like Lotus and Mazda who are known for their featherweight cars are now boxing in the middleweight class. EVs are hitting way above the heavyweight class due to their massive batteries. For them to go close to or as far as an ICE car they need to increase their battery size and with size comes weight.  At a certain point they can only get so big to where the actual weight of them starts to cut into the range they can provide. Then there is the battery material itself, Lithium. Lithium is the lightest metal and the third lightest element on the periodic table, so it not like they can get any lighter or really improve that much on the battery, sure they may be able to nip and tuck here and there. I am getting off topic again, the weight is the concern. Modern roads with safety barriers cannot withstand the impact of an EV running into it let alone the average sedan. And it is not like EVs are the turtle in the race, they are brilliantly fast, it is actually astonishing with all the weight they drag around how fast they are capable of going.  So now you have a vehicle that weighs 2.5-3 tons going at blistering speeds having to stop or maneuver to avoid an accident. Here is where high school physics comes into play, mass times acceleration equals you are going to die. In this universe or in reality with the laws of physics we abide by EV vehicles cannot safely avoid an accident at the speeds they travel with the weight they carry.

What have we found out here,? We know that technology in cars keeps the occupant safer and will keep improving as more data gets collected.  We also know that people are reluctant to new forms of safety technology until they are oblivious about it. The problem breaks down into three groups; the fully autonomous, ADAS, and the those who have limited or dated safety in their cars. Until everyone is in the same boat on the road, accidents will not decrease. The fully autonomous brings up some interesting moral, ethical and law-abiding questions. If all cars become autonomous, will the local and federal law enforcement be able to shut down a car or control it in the event of a search and seizure or probable cause for a traffic violation? How could there be a traffic violation if the car is driving itself?  Let’s take this one step further. Right now, with ADAS and the upcoming autonomous driving, the car is programed to protect, prevent, and save the occupant from an accident, we know this just from lane departure assist and emergency braking and other features. Hypothetical scenario: You are in your fully autonomous car taking the scenic road home, you are soaking in the landscape painted with autumn colors trees to your right and an oceanside cliff blanketed by the sunset to your left, life is good. All of a sudden, a six-year-old child darts out into the road just feet in front of you chasing after a ball.  Now remember autonomous cars number one program is to keep you out of harm’s way, so that means it will not swerve off the cliff or run into the wall of trees. So what happens to the child? Does it hit the child? And if so, who is at fault? The driver? The car company? The person who designed the program? The IIHS which approved the car to be on the road? It is a question that concerns me but also that I can not answer. Now a normal, good hearted, conscience human, hopefully wearing a seatbelt would take their chances, aim for the trees and hope for the best. Yes, this is a question designed for the car to lose and to have no clear winner, but it is something to think about and discuss.

So where do we go from here? It’s interesting, auto deaths are the most uniformed deaths there are, it is not a disease or a chronic illness that one gets a certain age or attacks someone because of their DNA.  As we have discussed the reasons why accidents happen is because of human negligence, ignorance, hubris, lack of focus, and distractions. Education is one element to keep those numbers down, it does seem that ADAS is assisting and helping with the issues but more data is needed to root out the problems. A possible interim solution could be regulated speed limiters on cars in residential areas and or “learning” and “probational” keys, keys that are programmed for the car to only go a certain speed for people learning how to drive, for young drivers, drivers over a certain age, drivers that have a bad driving record, misdemeanors and so forth. Some car manufactures such as Ford have announced in the upcoming years that warning lights and sounds will activate if driving over the speed limit in certain areas. We have the technology today already implemented in cars with cameras and GPS where cars could hold their speed within 5mph of the post speed limit within business and residential areas. A fascinating development has been in the industry for some time which has some controversy. There is something called the EDR or Electronic Data Recorder which is a federal requirement that is a placed in all cars and controlled at the federal level through NTSA and other regulatory organizations some are controlled at the state level. Think of these EDRs as what planes call the black box but for cars. These EDRs record data that can be used do research purposes, accident information, driving habits, etc. There is tension between the auto manufactures on how much they want to protect their consumers and leave this out vs the investigational side where they believe more is better for research and data purposes. Right now, the EDR records something like 30 seconds due to the limited storage space, they record over what had been previously recorded as the day goes on. There are those that argue or are petitioning to have larger memory storages to record somewhere in the timeframe of three minutes. The upside of this would be assisting the investigators; police, law makers, city planners, anyone designing roads, insurance companies, anyone who would benefit. The data collected would be anywhere from how long they were speeding, have they been breaking hard all day or just in the last few miles, why did they turn so hard where they were, or accelerate that point in the road? People designing cities and roads would figure out why people are taking this particular turn fast or slow and so forth. Basically, the more data collected the more that can be learned and then prevented.  Some insurance companies use or have tried this with devices that plug into your EDR like Big Brother to watch your driving habits. Some may think this is a positive move as you are being tracked and will be rewarded as a safer approach towards driving with lower monthly payments. Many though have disregarded the device as you are sacrificing your freedoms and feel that it is infringement on your life.

 One topic or interesting factoid that I did not brush upon was manual driving cars. People who drive manual cars actually have the least number of accidents. That is right, the more complicated a car is to drive is actually the safer way of driving, even though it might not be the safer car. When you are driving a manual, you are using all your appendages, both of your arms and legs which is causing your brain to focus on the task in hand while multitasking them in synchronicity. You have limited distractions, can’t really have your phone in hand, really hard to eat that wet dripping burger, or even toggle the radio. As a driver you are more engaged with what is happening because you have a direct feed into the car, you and that car have a symbiotic relationship, not to mention the most important, the pure joy and exhilaration from driving a stick shift car.

Driving will always be dangerous until humans are out of the equation and all vehicles on the road are on the same grid or network. I have found that we are not to be trusted as a speices. Cars are getting safer and will continuously to do so, but we have a long way to go before we can consider a car unconditionally safe. As far as driving goes, it’s a coin toss. On one hand I do believe that driving is becoming safer with ADAS but only for the occupant. The flip side of that coin is with the ADAS, you have the increase in size and weight which causes more danger when adding speed to that recipe. Then there is the possible distraction element (depending on the set-up car with the screen) which gives the driver a higher chance of an accident and injuring a bystander, another car, that may be older and not have modern safety standard equipment. In the end you have to think and live by the rules of governing dynamics, do what is best for you and the company or in this case other people, don’t be an idiot, be open and accept new technologies especially when it comes to safety. You are going to make mistakes, so my advice is to buckle up, stay focused, be alert, and minimize your distractions because you are an accident waiting to happen.