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The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

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Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#81

Post by epochwolf »

ams6110 wrote: post #37
ricree wrote: post #19

"Think about that. If we could cut down on car crashes by even 5% we could save more than 2,000 lives!" I don't know whether or not this is true, but the argument is fallacious. Without further evidence, it is a bit premature to assume that the fatal:nonfatal ratio in crashes prevented will be the same as that of crashes in general. It is possible, though unlikely, that a chance might only prevent nonfatal crashes.

Seems that I've read about studies that show that people have a certain, nearly unconscious risk tolerance. For example, ABS and all-wheel-drive made driving in the snow and ice easier, so people drive a bit faster or more aggressively until they reach their previous risk tolerance level. Thus the potential safety benefit is not realized in actuality. In fact, if people overestimate the added safety of the new techno…

I agree with this. I am far more comfortable driving faster with 4 wheel drive on, so I disable it as soon as I don't need it.

Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#82

Post by dnsworks »

As usual, Scoble misses the boat by several magnitudes in his aim to over-sensationalize something he read on techmeme. I would personally put safety glass, airbags, anti-lock brakes, traction control, and crumple zones ahead of radar. Those are technologies that improve safety for everybody, whereas radar is for people who don't pay attention and should not be driving in the first place.

Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#83

Post by Retric »

ams6110 wrote: post #37
ricree wrote: post #19

"Think about that. If we could cut down on car crashes by even 5% we could save more than 2,000 lives!" I don't know whether or not this is true, but the argument is fallacious. Without further evidence, it is a bit premature to assume that the fatal:nonfatal ratio in crashes prevented will be the same as that of crashes in general. It is possible, though unlikely, that a chance might only prevent nonfatal crashes.

Seems that I've read about studies that show that people have a certain, nearly unconscious risk tolerance. For example, ABS and all-wheel-drive made driving in the snow and ice easier, so people drive a bit faster or more aggressively until they reach their previous risk tolerance level. Thus the potential safety benefit is not realized in actuality. In fact, if people overestimate the added safety of the new techno…

Looking at the data, the steady decline in deaths per passageway mile suggests improving safety actually works. Now, it may be useful to make people feel less safe, but IMO most accidents are caused by people not really paying attention and automated systems which tell them something bad happens should help as long as they alert the driver that something bad almost happened.

PS: The fact you can take little damage while rear ending someone at 65MPH is not something the average person wants to test out.

Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#84

Post by MartinCron »

ams6110 wrote: post #33
mschy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice what it means is that if you're about to crash into something, and you hit the brakes, that it hits them 100% right off the bat, instead of the 50% or 80% that most people would go for. I've not used the system in the Prius, but I've used a competing system and it's not at all surprising.

In many cases you're better off trying to steer around the collision than (or in addition to) stopping short of it. I've seen a few crashes where people could have just steered onto the shoulder or median to avoid the crash but it seems that they just applied the brakes and hoped for the best. I don't think driver's education in the USA teaches emergency maneuvering much. How is it elsewhere?

For what it's worth, that's the main focus of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course. If I remember correctly, 35 mph is the speed at which is easier/faster/safer to swerve than to try to stop a two-wheeled vehicle.

Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#85

Post by [deleted] »

portman wrote: post #51
dgallagher wrote: post #48

GPS-enabled Governors should be put in all cars too, limiting your speed to that of the speed limit, adjusted for weather conditions. If you're in a 35 MPH zone, you car will stop accelerating (and ideally auto-slow when going downhill or onto slower roads) once you hit the limit for that part of the road. Speed limits would likely have to be re-adjusted in some cases as they may be too low in some area's, but it wou…

This proposal wouldn't increase safety until all cars on the road had the GPS-governor feature, which would take 15-20 years for old cars to be phased out. In the meantime, the new cars would have an annoyance (no speeding) without providing any measurable safety improvement.

[deleted]

Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#86

Post by Devilboy »

patio11 wrote: post #54
Devilboy wrote: post #20

BMW has a system in their top-end saloons that will safely pull your car over to the side of the road without crashing if the driver is suddenly incapacitated (e.g. a heart attack). These system are great and I hope we can overcome the social barriers eventually. Car accidents are still the #1 cause of preventable death worldwide. EDIT: Here's another great system expected to start trials in 2011: http://nextbigfutur…

Car accidents are still the #1 cause of preventable death worldwide. That strikes me as unlikely, given that car accidents kill something like 50,000 people a year in the US. Just inside the US, an obvious candidate for prevention -- medical mistakes -- kills far more people. (Estimated at 200k per year preventable deaths in hospitals alone.) Casting our glance worldwide, poorer nations have millions of deaths from c…

World stats (causes of death) according to WHO:

1) Coronary heart disease - 12.2%

2) Stroke and other cerebrovascular diseases - 9.7%

3) Lower respiratory infections - 7.1%

4) Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - 5.1%

5) Diarrhoeal diseases - 3.7%

6) HIV/AIDS - 3.5%

7) Tuberculosis - 2.5%

8) Trachea, bronchus, lung cancers - 2.3%

9) Road traffic accidents - 2.2%

Although maybe it's more correct to say the leading cause of accidental death is car crashes. I guess 'preventable' is too broad a word.

Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#87

Post by sailormoon »

chaosmachine wrote: post #3
ErrantX wrote: post #2

It is so reliable I no longer impulsively reach for my brakes. Let’s say the car in front of me speeds up after slamming on its brakes. Hmm. That sounds pretty dangerous :(

Yeah, I could see this becoming a problem in the future. Imagine getting used to this, then for some reason, needing to drive an older car. "Oops, I didn't realize this car required manual braking".

There could be two classes of license, like in Japan where you can have a limited qualification to drive only automatics, or a full license including manuals too. In this case, however, the "automatic" would be the fully automated vehicle, and the "manual" would be the traditional human-controlled one.

Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#88

Post by jsz0 »

dnsworks wrote: post #82

As usual, Scoble misses the boat by several magnitudes in his aim to over-sensationalize something he read on techmeme. I would personally put safety glass, airbags, anti-lock brakes, traction control, and crumple zones ahead of radar. Those are technologies that improve safety for everybody, whereas radar is for people who don't pay attention and should not be driving in the first place.

Those careless people do drive and radar might stop them from causing an accident that kills your friends or family one day. Radar also has a huge potential to improve the safety of pedestrians who otherwise might briefly admire the traction control system of a careless driver's car before they are crushed to death.

Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#89

Post by dghughes »

"Another place the radar is invaluable? In fog. I drive over the Santa Cruz mountains every day to get home and there often is fog. One day there was a car in front of me that had no back taillights."

I bet the driver of that car was just using parking lights. I hate that! People who drive with parking lights on don't seem to realize the rear running lights are not on, parking lights are not meant to be used when driving that's what headlights are for.

Re: The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

#90

Post by jsz0 »

Besides radar I think there's a lot of potential for automated systems to help drivers cope with snow & ice. For example a sensor scanning the road able to warn the driver of black ice, or at least inform the driver that they may be seeing rain on their windshield but it's freezing on the ground. Maybe speed controls based on real time weather conditions. No one should be going over 40MPH on any road in the snow. How about using cars as a way to measure road safety? Monitor the road conditions and the cars traction and report this information to the DOT so a plow/sander can be dispatched to particularly bad areas.
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