New and unsafe technology leads to more accidents

With new technology comes safer driving and less accidents on the road, or so you would think. However, as the amount of autonomous vehicles and gigantic SUVs and trucks on the roads increase, so does the amount of fatal car accidents. In fact, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were over 39,221 fatal crashes in 2022 alone. That is why understanding the causes of these accidents and coming up with solutions to mitigate them is a crucial process in lowering the amount of deaths as a result of driving.

Firstly, a major cause of fatality on the streets is excessively huge SUVs and trucks, as Americans desire bigger and faster cars, they come at a cost of deadlier and deadlier car accidents. In fact in just the last 10 years, pedestrian deaths have risen by nearly 60%, most of them being single vehicle crashes. Meaning that the pedestrians on the road lost their lives to just a single collision. And the main contributing factor to these statistics is larger cars that cause severe damage on collision. For example modern day F-150s trucks are almost 800 pounds heavier and 7 inches taller than the same models made in 1991. While they may feel more comfortable to drive, these models have huge blind spots that are contributing to unsafe driving. The large and flat hoods create a front end blind spot while the “pillar” between the side window and the windshield creates another blind spot while these vehicles are turning. As we begin to make trucks so tall that the driver cannot see children crossing the road, this is when you know that vehicle designs are prioritizing an aesthetic over safety for our communities.

Another reason why the amount of car accidents have increased in the last 10 years is the overreliance on self driving technology. It has made many drivers incredibly distracted while driving, even though the technology itself is far from mature, people are already fully relying on it in day to day driving. People are on their phones, daydreaming, and even completely falling asleep at the wheel while they expect autopilot to do everything. We are so quick to accept technology that they do not even doubt the safety of it. To fix this issue, autopilot should be prohibited in high volume traffic and during unsafe road conditions, for example autopilot should be disabled during low visibility situations such as intense fog, sun glare, and during night time. These changes should be implemented to keep the roads safe until autonomous vehicles technology has matured enough to be safe to use during these times.

Another way in which we can reduce the number of accidents is by furthering drivers education. I fully believe that driver’s education should be brought back to the classroom to better teach our next generation of teenagers about the effects and dangers of driving. As it is right now, the knowledge test only tests them on basic information regarding traffic laws, many who take the test do not fully understand how dangerous it is to be on the road.

An experience I had which illustrated to me how important driver education is in a car accident that my family went through. My family was rear ended by an SUV at over 45 mph when we were slowing down at an intersection to make a turn. The impact shook the entire car and crushed the trunk of our car while the other car’s hood was completely dented and their car had to be towed off the road. It turned out that the other driver was a new driver that was not focused on the road and did not see us slowing down to make a turn. This accident impacted my family for months as we went through multiple checkups for injuries, filed an extensive insurance claim, and we even had to rent another car for a time. This experience showed me how important it is to have better driver education for everyone because even if you are focused on the road, someone else could have made a mistake that would cause you to be in an accident. If drivers education was integrated more into schools this accident could have been avoided because the other driver would have known how dangerous it is to be on the road and they would have been focused while driving. Something that I could do to make the roads a safer place is to encourage my peers to practice safe driving habits and to always pay attention to the road while driving.

This is why it is important to have good driver education so that we can have safer roads for everybody involved. And to make the roads a safer place we can limit the size of trucks to have safer designs, limit auto driving in during unsafe conditions, and reinstate driver’s education classes in schools to better educate people on the dangers of driving.