Crash avoidance technologies
Most automakers offer crash-avoidance systems on 2018 models, reports the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. IIHS studies of police-reported crashes and Highway Loss Data Institute analyses of insurance losses have found that many of these features are reducing crashes in the real world, including:
- Front crash prevention systems, which include forward collision warning and autobrake. Warning systems alert you if you get too close to a car in front. Autobrake systems can brake if you don’t respond in time.
- Lane-departure warning and lane-keeping assist, which help prevent lane-departure crashes.
- Blind-spot detection, which alerts drivers to nearby vehicles they might not see.
- Park-assist systems, which help reduce backing crashes.
- Curve-adaptive headlights, which shift direction with steering to help you see better on curves in the dark.
- High-beam assist technology, which automatically switches between high beams and low beams.
In the zone
Distracted driving is no joke. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that distracted driving led to 3,450 of 37,461 fatalities in 2016. Fatal distracted driving crashes are up 8.5 percent since 2014. Despite it all, you have to laugh at some of the excuses drivers make up while getting collared for texting while driving. Here’s one from a driver in Niles, Illinois, as reported by the Chicago Tribune: “It was a call from an indigent guy who’s calling me looking for work.” Many people claim the phone call was an emergency. And the Tribune writes this about one of Niles police Officer John Gaba’s collars: “A young woman beside his squad car was so absorbed in texting that he had to sound his horn repeatedly – she looked up as if coming out of a dream.” Says Gaba, “They get in a zone.”
A thousand moral decisions
New York Times columnist David Brooks took a philosophical and spiritual look at driving in a Jan. 4 column called “How Would Jesus Drive?” “As Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution points out, driving is precisely the sort of everyday activity through which people mold the culture of their community,” writes Brooks. “If you speed up so I can’t merge into your lane, you’re teaching me that the society around here is basically competitive, not cooperative. If, on the other hand, you give me a friendly wave after I let you in, you’re teaching me that this is a place where a kindness is recognized and gratitude is expressed. If you feel perfectly fine doing a three-point turn in the middle of a busy street, blocking everybody else going both ways, you teach me that people here are selfish and feel entitled. But if you get over to the right and wait your turn in a crowded highway exit lane, rather than cutting in at the last moment, that teaches me that there’s a sense of fairness and equality, and that people feel embedded in the group.
“Driving means making a thousand small moral decisions: whether to tailgate to push the slowpoke faster, or to give space; whether to honk only as a warning or constantly as your all-purpose show of contempt for humanity. Driving puts you in a constant position of asking, Are we in a place where there is a system of self-restraint, or are we in a place where it’s dog eat dog?”
No sweat
Bike to your next call in comfort, at least in San Francisco. Motivate, the company behind the San Francisco Bay Area’s bike-share system, was planning to add pedal-assist e-bikes to its fleets this April, reports techcrunch.com. The one-year pilot will launch with 250 e-bikes in San Francisco. The bikes, created by startup GenZe, are designed to assist riders as they’re pedaling, therefore reducing the need for much energy while biking – especially uphill. The pilot program will be part of the existing Ford GoBike network. GenZe is also the scooter provider for Scoot Networks, the scooter-sharing startup that operates in San Francisco.
Legal limit for alcohol
In most developed nations, driving with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.05 percent or higher is illegal. A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommends this standard for the United States as well. “The public health case is compelling,” according to researchers. Laboratory and epidemiologic studies demonstrate that functional impairment and increased risk begin well below 0.08 percent, and most studies show decreases in crashes and fatalities when legal limits are lowered to 0.05 percent. Some Canadian provinces issue only administrative sanctions (fines or administrative license revocation but no possibility of incarceration) for driving with a BAC between 0.05 percent and 0.079 percent, which reduces the burdens associated with criminal charges. In the United States, Utah passed the first 0.05 percent law, but its details have not been finalized, and it continues to face opposition from the alcohol industry. Despite decades of progress, more than 10 000 alcohol-related driving fatalities occur each year, and that number is increasing.