The Future of Automobile Safety

The Future of Automobile Safety

Written by Coreena Boyer

In 2018, 534 people died in plane crashes. When there is a plane crash, it is covered by all the major media stations and there is collective heartbreak for all the families who have suffered tragic loss. Our communities become fearful of flying and most airlines report a decrease in revenue after any aircraft accident. Comparatively, 36,560 people died in automobile accidents in 2018 in the United States alone. Yet, we hear very little about this massive death toll. Media outlets do not publish stories about it and each families’ heartache has become a silent phenomenon. When a plane crashes and a few hundred suffer, we boycott airlines and force them to implement better safety protocols. As a society, why do we not have the same outcry when thousands of deaths occur behind the steering wheel of a car?

When you hear the term “Driver Education,” a lot of people think of a class in highschool. In these classes children are taught the rules of the road and special skills for high stress situations that involve automobiles. These can be very beneficial, not just for the young newly licened drivers, but for people of all ages.Yet, Driver Education classes are something that many people have to seek out for themselves. Many highschools have cut their Driver Ed classes inorder to save money in their budget and finding a community based class near you may also be hard to do. Not only is this a sad circumstance, but I believe it is also a dangerous one. America’s young adults are already at a high risk for car accidents, and when important safety classes are bypassed in order to save money, it leaves our young ones without the knowledge that could save their lives.

Reducing deaths caused by automobile accidents should be higher on the American radar. Driver Education classes and knowledge bases courses in physics and traffic procedures could indeed make an impact. But I believe our biggest advancement in reducing fatality will be with technology. The number one cause of automobile related incidents is human error. When you take human error out of the equation, you will reduce the rate of death and injury in traffic collisions.

Technology is becoming more advanced as the years go by. Self Driving cars seemed like something out of a science fiction movie just 10 years ago, but yet we have them on our roads today. Going completely autopilot is not the only way to put technology in our cars. There are many technology companies who have put their energies and money into Driver Assistance Technologies. These are automated sensors and auditory beeps and signals that alert the driver when foreign objects are close enough for possible impact, even if these objects are out of the vision of the driver. Some systems will automatically apply emergency breaking systems when the sensors determine that a collision with an object is imminent. A computer can calculate data 10 million times faster than a human. How long does it take to remove your foot from the gas petal and move it to break? If that was done 10 million times faster in any given automobile incident, how many collisions could be prevented?

I dont believe that technology will reduce traffic related deaths to zero. But if technology can reduce the death rate by 50%, that is thousands of lives saved every year. I was in a major car crash several years ago. Both cars involved were totaled, but luckily nobody was seriously injured. I have lasting nerve damage in my knee from the force of the impact, yet this is minor compared to what could have happened. I believe that if there was Driver Assistance Technologies and automatic breaking mechanisms in our cars, the severity of the crash could have been reduced greatly. Perhaps even avoided all together.

At this moment in time, it is up to each individual person to research and decide for themselves how to include automobile safety into their lives. We can search for and actively take Driver Education classes. This can significantly improve our traffic knowledge and ingrain important auto-responses into our memories for high stress situations. We can also do investigative research before buying a car and select one that has highly rated Driver Assistance Technologies installed. Without question, we all need to be aware of distracted driving and avoid cell phones and other portable devices that could cause a distraction with irriversable consequences.

The vast majority of us use some sort of automobile transportation every day of our lives. Awareness of our safety and the safety of those in other vehicles around us should be a concern for everyone. Reducing the casualty rate of automobile accidents by even 1 person, is something we should all want to achieve. I sincerely hope that some day soon, legislation is passed that will put car makers responsible for implementing affordable safely technology in all automobiles. But safety does not just come from the car manufacturers. It comes from our knowledge, our attention, and our two hands on the steering wheel.