Finding new Approaches: Addressing vehicle related deaths in America

Have you ever wondered how Google knows when the mall is busiest? We’ve all looked up a business at some point and seen that little bar chart; the one that tells you how busy they are each hour of the day – every day. One mechanism by which we can reduce car crash fatalities is by working with cell phone companies. Software in modern cellular technology such as iPhones is already able to detect when people are driving. One can google any business and see when they are busiest because Google keeps a log of the locations of their phones (Google support, 2023). They keep track of when these phones enter a business so they can do the math out for when the business is most trafficked. In order to do this google has to track the locations of these phones moving on some level; meaning if they knew when the carrier of the phone was driving and also being actively used they could send a notification to the driver.

So how will google know when someone is driving? Simple; if the phone is moving at 30 miles per hour we know they are in a form of transportation other than walking. If their route is consistent with roads we know they are in a car. If we know they are in a car and their phone is only being used on long straight roads and never while turning they are almost certainly the driver. If this pattern consists the iPhone could potentially send them a notification. This notification can simply ask them if they are driving and if they tap it they can be guided to a DMV page about the hazards of driving. We shouldn’t need to take drastic measures such as locking a phone or contacting the police as something like this would never be 100% accurate; however, the simple recognition that they are doing the wrong thing will decrease the likelihood that they continue.

Placards that display the speed limit, for example, have been proven to slow the average speed of drivers by 1-11 miles per hour(PBS, 2015). Simply being reminded of the law is often enough to set people back on the right track – nobody is perfect after all. Setting in place a system like this could save lives by reducing the total amount of time spent distracted driving and help us to evade these sorts of issues. Setting these programs into the phone would also not require an increase in the amount of monitoring that Google does of people’s data; it could be anonymized in the same manner as those programs that already exist to tell us about traffic and there’s no need for personal data to be reported to Google.

Driver education is absolutely critical to reducing the number of accidents that could result in fatalities as a marked percentage of them will occur as a result of avoidable mistakes such as distracted driving. In regards to distracted driving, our current system of educating drivers is verifiably not working; because, statistically speaking the number of fatalities resulting from distracted driving is not decreasing. The number of deaths caused by distracted drivers in America in 2010 was 3,092 which accounted for 9% of the total number of vehicle-related fatalities that year. (NHTSA, 2010). In 2020 3,142 people died accounting for, again, 9% of the total number of deaths(Forbes, 2023).

This leveling off of the data, where we have been unable to reduce the number of deaths caused by distracted driving, has occurred despite massive advances in crash safety technology such as airbags as well as massive increases in our efforts to educate the public on these issues. Even now in 2023 this trend is continuing, with again approximately 3,000 fatalities and 9% of the total coming from this group. On the issue of drunk driving 10,228 deaths resulted from drunk driving in 2010(NHTSA, 2010); in 2020, however, this number rose to 11,654 (CDC, 2021). The failure to lower these numbers over time is an issue that needs to be regarded and addressed. We need to acknowledge this area in which we have not been successful in educating the public and seek alternate or improved pathways to address this issue.

I tried to propose an atypical solution at the outset of my essay because what we are doing now is simply not working. I can’t say for certain that my idea would work however I can say that new ideas appear to be necessary. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results and our current results are no better now than 10 years ago. Change in this sense is necessary to address the issue of unsafe driving.

Works Cited

Bieber, Christy, and Brette Sember. “Distracted Driving Statistics & Facts In 2023 – Forbes Advisor.” Forbes, 23 February 2023, https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/auto-accident/distracted-driving-statistics/. Accessed 1 August 2023.

CDC. “Impaired Driving: Get the Facts | Transportation Safety | Injury Center.” CDC, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html. Accessed 1 August 2023.

Google Support. “Popular times, wait times, and visit duration – Google Business Profile Help.” Google Help, 2023, https://support.google.com/business/answer/6263531?hl=en. Accessed 1 August 2023.

NHTSA. “Distracted Driving 2010.” CrashStats – NHTSA, 2010, https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811650. Accessed 1 August 2023.

Saksa, Jim. “Streetsplainer: Do radar speed signs ever really slow drivers down?” WHYY, 10 September 2015, https://whyy.org/articles/streetsplainer-do-radar-speed-signs-ever-really-slow-drivers-down/. Accessed 1 August 2023.