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’s jimmy-rigged on top of books, life is dangerous, take driving for example. Every five seconds, or in the amount of time it takes to read this sentence, a car accident has occurred. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 6,420,000 accidents happen a year, resulting in roughly 115 deaths a day, 94% of which are attributed to human error. So how is this possible with all the mandatory technological advances in cars versus 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 a minute.

Throughout history most if not all humans have always agreed on one ethos, one belief: to prolong life, to find ways of extending past the one insurmountable truth that we will all perish. Before real advancements in medicine, technology, healthcare, knowledge in foods, and 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 a potentially harmful scenario, is something humans have strived for throughout the ages. Armor was one of those technologies; if you had no other choice but to be put in harm’s way, it 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, and as a result of this, huge numbers of crashes and fatalities were happening at an alarming rate. Around this time car manufacturers 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 customers. 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 Cayley 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 patented the first seatbelt for taxis in New York City, something that has yet to catch on there. Travel some 3,000 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, a car manufacturer called “Nash” offered seatbelts as a factory option, the first American automaker to do so. However, as 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 that left the factory with seatbelts, only about 1,000 still had them in use a year later. 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 their 30s to 60s and had already lived through one or in some cases two World Wars, were probably proficient on a horse — which did not have a seatbelt either — and just thought it was a propaganda tool or something. They had lived this long without one, why would they need one now, that type of mentality. Human stubbornness at its finest. But it would not be until Nils Bohlin, a Swedish engineer, came along in 1959 that someone 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 leapt the world of automotive safety forward. Volvo saw the importance and crucial impact it would have on the world and decided to share the patent with every manufacturer for free. Gotta love those Swedes.

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 later — 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 and actually think about 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; the causes are interrelated. Can you guess what is leading the pack? Yup, alcohol. Alcohol consumes about 30%–35% of the cause of accidents, excessive speeding accounts for about 20%–25%, and not paying attention or distraction (eating, cell phone, screens, and so forth) 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 a 0.08 blood-alcohol level; your judgment and motor skills may not be impaired at the same caliber, but it’s your ability to focus and the higher level of distraction that keeps you from driving safely. Taking your eyes off the road and utilizing touchscreens is also a massive contributor, versus the physical buttons which have muscle memory attributes that help 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 that 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 — 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 by introducing 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 to have automated seat 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 manufacturers decided to go with the automated seat belts over the airbags, mainly because it was more cost effective on the front and back end. 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 the 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’re strapped in — what’s 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 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 to having the feeling of the belt across them that they missed the sense of security, and 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 Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS — preventive braking, traction control, cameras, warning lights, drowsiness-detection systems, advances in brake systems, rollover prevention, handling, eye-tracking systems, and so forth), crumple zones, the construction of the car itself, the 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 its 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 that cars do, and on a more intimate and micro level. 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 covering basic safety factors: seatbelts, airbags, traction control, etc. Over a span of 50 years, they concluded that those basic safety technologies had saved 613,501 lives. 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 the potential is pretty much limitless with technology, but if there is a yin there is always a 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 of which could cause catastrophic issues and accidents. In my opinion, and I could be completely alone here, hackers might be the largest concern. Nothing is impenetrable; email accounts, bank accounts, highly secured networks, companies, they have all 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 pileup, 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 autonomous driving to happen. There are six levels or stages when it comes to ADAS, numbered zero through five — 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 algorithm in the computer.

Right now, we are about at level two when it comes to driver assistance in most vehicles — the car can do some of the tasks, but when it needs you it will let you know. A few have reached toward level three. The AFEELA, a joint venture between Sony and Honda, was built around a stated goal of level three autonomy and became the poster child for where this was all heading — before Sony Honda Mobility discontinued the project in March of 2026, a casualty of a cooling EV market and Honda reworking its electrification strategy. The company is gone, but it served its purpose in the story: it showed the industry, and the public, what level three was supposed to look like. The torch for production-ready level three has been carried by Mercedes-Benz, whose Drive Pilot system is certified for level three and approved for use on public roads in Nevada and California, letting the driver legally take their eyes off the road under specific conditions. So why not jump to level four or five versus 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 to mention retrofitting the older cars with the needed technology, or the cost to keep up. It is basically a massive infrastructure problem. Implementing steps of technology and safety in cars is a comfortable segue 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, for lack of a better word, “not care” that they are not driving as much, or not want to — and by that time the fleet or herd 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 democratizing safety. This is when you get all of the automakers, place them in a room with coffee and donuts, and 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, and shows the public that all the manufacturers are 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.

EVs are a great example of these 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 the public we can make one if we wanted to — 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 Tesla came around with the Roadster and the Model S that lightning was captured in a 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 manufacturers started to visualize and conceive the potential of technology in vehicles for the future. Whether 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 too sidetracked here. Having said that, one of the biggest concerns with ADAS cars, which affects all modern EVs 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 inches of shoulder room in the back seat, which is so important. One of the main reasons why they are growing in weight is because of all the computers controlling all the ADAS. With more computers also comes larger and heavier batteries. Cars now are heavy beasts. Even manufacturers 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’s 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 them, 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 embrace new forms of safety technology until they become oblivious to it. The problem breaks down into three groups: the fully autonomous, ADAS, and 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 legal questions. If all cars become autonomous, will 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 programmed 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, soaking in the landscape, painted with autumn-colored 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, an autonomous car’s 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 one that I cannot answer. Now a normal, good-hearted, conscientious 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 uniform deaths there are; it is not a disease or a chronic illness that one gets at a certain age, or that attacks someone because of their DNA. As we have discussed, the reasons accidents happen are human negligence, ignorance, hubris, lack of focus, and distraction. Education is one element to keep those numbers down, and 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 “probationary” 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 manufacturers, such as Ford, have announced that in the upcoming years 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 5 mph of the posted 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 Event Data Recorder, which is a federal requirement: a device placed in nearly all cars and controlled at the federal level through NHTSA and other regulatory organizations, though 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 for research purposes, accident information, driving habits, etc. There is tension between the auto manufacturers over how much they want to protect their consumers and leave this out, versus 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, capturing the moments around a triggering crash event rather than running on a continuous loop all day. There are those who argue, or are petitioning, to have larger memory storage to record somewhere in the timeframe of three minutes. The upside of this would be assisting investigators: police, lawmakers, city planners, anyone designing roads, insurance companies, anyone who would benefit. The data collected would be anything from how long they were speeding, have they been braking hard all day or just in the last few miles, why did they turn so hard where they did, or accelerate at 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 for a safer approach toward driving with lower monthly payments. Many, though, have disregarded the device, as you are sacrificing your freedoms and feel that it is an infringement on your life.

One topic, or interesting factoid, that I did not touch 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 at 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 part, 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 species. Cars are getting safer and will continue 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 that 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 setup of the car with the screen), which gives the driver a higher chance of an accident and injuring a bystander, or 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.