Next time you’re driving, look around at nearby drivers. Are they focused on the task at hand — piloting two tons or so of machinery down a narrow strip of pavement — or is their attention diverted?
Chances are more than a few of those drivers are glancing at their phones, fiddling with their audio systems, fumbling for their Big Gulps, sparking cigarettes, or just trying to operate the myriad knobs and buttons on their dashboards. It’s quickly clear to anyone who gets behind a wheel that distracted driving is a huge problem — and you are probably as guilty as we are of having our attention grabbed by the accouterments of modern life when it should be on the road ahead.
Distraction at the wrong time — or when something unexpected happens on the road — is a major cause of accidents. NHTSA says 16 percent of all police-reported crashes in 2013 were caused by driver distraction, including 10 percent of fatal crashes and 18 percent of injury accidents. That translates to 3,154 deaths and an estimated 424,000 injuries as a result of distracted driving. The agency also notes that driver distraction is the root cause of many rear-end collisions, which account for 29 percent of all highway accidents.
Sure, the distracted mind may be a natural by-product of today’s hyper-connected lifestyle, but there are things we all can do to help prevent the tragic results of distracted driving. For instance, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, some 660,000 drivers are using a hand-held phone at any given time during daylight hours. An early call by the National Traffic Safety Board to ban all cellphone use in cars — even use of hands-free devices — fell on deaf . . . well, distracted ears, but automakers and safety advocates are in lockstep when it comes to saving us from myriad in-car distractions. A multi-pronged approach calls for:
—Eliminating the distractions by making interfaces easier to manipulate either through hands-free voice control or via redundant steering-wheel controls.
—Shutting down devices that are unrelated to driving while the car is moving. Examples include text messaging, web browsing, video entertainment and communications, social media, and navigation address entry.
—Installing safety systems that assist or intervene on behalf of the distracted driver, including forward collision warnings and automatic braking, lane-departure and correction systems, and blind-spot alerts in new vehicles.
Many of these guidelines have already been implemented, but, depending on the automaker, that could mean anything from a total shutdown of certain systems when a car is in motion to a polite and quickly dismissed warning message against the use of those distracting systems while driving. Short of banning anything that creates an in-car distraction — something that hasn’t happened in the entire history of transportation — technology that alerts of impending doom or autonomously brakes or steers to prevent or minimize accidents holds the most promise. NHTSA studies have found that autonomous braking systems can reduce crash severity by an average of 34 percent, cutting the number of injuries and fatalities by 50 percent and eliminating 8 to 14 percent of all rear-end crashes.
Though full implementation of pre-crash automatic braking across the nation’s entire vehicle fleet is years off, we’re already seeing inroads, and not just in premium models. Systems that detect obstacles and can automatically brake if necessary are optional on an array of models offered by General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, Mazda, Honda, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Hyundai. Strong systems are common on many luxury liners, including Acura, Audi, BMW, Infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo models.
In 2013, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety began rating vehicles based on whether they offered forward collision warnings and/or automatic braking and how well those systems performed. IIHS testing awarded points for warning alerts and its highest “superior” rating to those cars that could automatically actuate the brakes to prevent or minimize a collision. See the test results here: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP-List
Where’s it all leading? A peek into the crystal ball tells us that as early as 2020 we’ll be piloting cars that can be set to perform a number of highly autonomous driving functions, from braking in regular traffic or emergency situations, to steering to keep a vehicle safely in a lane or in an emergency to prevent a dangerous road run-off. The best systems today can already handle many of the tasks of everyday driving: accelerating, braking, stop-and-go traffic, steering correction to stay in a lane or follow a curve, and warnings of abrupt steering or braking corrections to prevent potential crashes. But because they involved so-called semi-autonomous function, drivers must be actively engaged with the vehicle — hands on the steering wheel, for instance — or the systems shut down.
The next step, once highly autonomous vehicles are on the road, is the fully autonomous car. German auto supplier Continental is already testing its second-generation autonomous car, and the only limitation to putting the technology in the hands of the general public is the need for redundant systems, says Continental autonomous systems engineer Ibro Muharemovic.
“We are concerned that we need to make an autonomous car 100-percent accurate and controlled,” says Muharemovic, “A failure won’t be considered an accident. It will be a liability.”
While we think the best and least expensive solution would be for drivers to actually pay attention while driving their cars, in reality that’s a dream that is rapidly fading in the rear-view mirror. As more attention is placed on solving the problem of distracted driving, it’s evident that legislating driver attentiveness is becoming a smaller and smaller part of the equation.
Below, you can find a few social media assets from Distraction.gov – the U.S. Government’s official website regarding distracted driving.