Home
The Latest Vehicular Danger: Distracted Drivers
Five teenage girls were enroute to a school athletic function. They were all chattering away, both with their friends in the car and on their cellular telephones. The driver was even texting to her boyfriend, whom she expected to meet at the game. The car was traveling too fast, but not so fast that the driver couldn’t have reacted in time had she not been multi-tasking. She pulled out to pass a slower moving tractor-trailer just as she was sending a text and ran head-on into a loaded dump truck coming the other way. All five girls were killed, snuffed out before their lives had really begun. The oldest was sixteen and the youngest was fifteen and all were dead.
According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, cell phone use is responsible for 28% of the traffic collisions. Many people assume that hand-held phones are the culprit, but testing has shown that regardless of whether the driver is using a handheld or hands-free device, their reaction times are equally diminished. The real culprit is a distraction of any sort. Extensive testing has shown that the human mind is not capable of focusing on more than one thing at a time, despite what busy executives would have you believe. Multi-tasking just isn’t humanly possible, not with full attention to any of the tasks being undertaken. The report says that cell phone users are four times more likely to crash than a driver who is not distracted. Quite simply, driving should occupy 100% of the driver’s attention and any fractional reduction of that is courting disaster.
The younger the driver, the more likely they are to be on their cell phone. Eighty-nine percent of teenagers admitted they used their phones while driving. At that age we all think we are bulletproof and immortal, but we aren’t. Not only do teenagers lack the experience and skills, but they are more likely to be driving distracted. It is more a matter of luck rather than skill, when they avoid a vehicular collision while using their cellular for talking or texting. Thirty-six percent of the teens surveyed admitted to texting while driving. Texting not only distracts their attention, but it diverts their eyes from the road.
Many jurisdictions are banning the use of any hand-held cellular phone while driving. Some of them are even banning all cellular usage by the driver while the vehicle is moving. What is the answer? Should there be a device on vehicles that blocks cell phone use? This would probably not be well accepted by most and viewed as just more governmental intervention in our lives. Much like smoking, everyone knows that it is harmful, but people still light up. But, something has to be done.
Small SUV's Flavour Of The Year
Figures released today by the Federal Chamber Of Automotive Industries (FCAI) reveal that small suv’s are outpacing their bigger counterparts , showing a sixty one per cent increase in sales over last year against thirty two per cent for the whole segment.
Cars in this smaller SUV segment include the Suzuki Grand Vitara, Nissan X Trail, Mazda CX5 and Hyundai IX35.
The sales performances for last month still show the Toyota Hi Lux as the best selling vehicle, followed by the Mazda3 and Toyota Corolla. Toyota as a brand outsold Holden by almost two to one with Mazda snapping at Holden’s wheels in third place.
Elk Test Strikes Again!
Recently, the Moose Test, administered in Sweden by local publication Teknikens Varld, found another new SUV 4×4 to be wanting. I wonder what the equivalent Australian test might be? Maybe it would be the ‘Roo test’ or the ‘Camel test’ or the “Great Big Bullock test”. Maybe, the ANCAP crash lab might look at the new “Roo Test” as an interesting addition to their testing methods. Hey, it is a valid everyday test that provides a very clear yes-or-no, pass-or-fail result in an emergency situation that could jeopardise a family’s safety.
Unfortunately for Jeep, they were on the receiving end of a failed-to-pass mark. The new Jeep Cherokee was put through a sudden left to right turn at a speed of just under 64 km/h to simulate what a driver might have to do to avoid hitting an elk that might wander onto a country road in the Nordic countries. The Moose Test (or Elk Test) is standard practice in Scandinavia, and recreates a potential danger common in these Nordic countries. The Swedes found that the new Jeep Grand Cherokee failed the test. The new 4×4 nearly tipped over. Jeep’s parent company Chrysler contested the results, insisting that Teknikens Varld had tampered with the results by overloading the vehicle and switching the electronic stability program off.
To make sure that this wasn’t a mistake, Teknikens Varld went back and performed the test again. In fact, they tested the Jeep Cherokee seven times. What resulted was the Jeep Cherokee popped the left front tyre seven times in a row, and nearly toppled over.
Adding some balance, German magazine Auto Motor und Sport oversaw the same test with satisfactory results. Even at relatively high speeds, the new Jeep Cherokee did not tip over and passed the test with flying colours. So maybe Cherokee owners don’t have to panic if they spot a roo in the headlights. However, to be on the safe side, make sure you aren’t carrying half the house up top on the roof racks (it wrecks your aerodynamic efficiency, anyway) and keep the ESP switched on. And your speed down at night in rural areas where roos, camels and cattle are likely to think that the middle of the road is a nice place to rest.
Maybe Australian’s Wheels Magazine might be able to simulate a similar test at their yearly COTY testing. It would be amusing, to say the least. But what are they going to call it?
Highway Manners And Commonsense Rules Of The Road
Driving is a privilege, not a right. That privilege is granted by the people who constitute the governing body; State, District, Region, Country or whatever. It is granted after the driver applicant has passed written and driving tests showing that they have learned the basic rules-of-the-road, both written and implied, as well as possessing the manual skills to operate a vehicle safely. In some areas of the world, these tests and the driving requirements require a high level of skill and much study. In other areas there is less emphasis on these important lessons, resulting in a high percentage of highway deaths and injuries to young people. Many of these teenagers and young adults make fatal errors before they develop the skills to drive responsibly.
Attention diverting activities are also responsible for many automobile collisions. The advent of modern communication devices is largely responsible for much of this inattention. Texting while driving, talking on the cell phone, selecting music on an i-Pod or the CD player or simply talking animatedly with a passenger are frequently the causes of vehicular mishaps. Eating is another diversion that infringes upon the safety, as is involvement with the children in the backseat. In short, a driver should be focused on driving and little else.
“Drive Friendly, Courtesy is Contagious,” was a safety slogan of the State of
Texas, USA, during the 1970s. It made people aware that they weren’t alone on the highway and they should extend courtesy to other drivers. In return, other drivers were influenced to extend courtesy to others, and so-on down the line. Common courtesy goes a long way towards preventing “road-rage,” an action that leads to intended collisions or other automotive mischief. Check out the attached link to a film clip of what a lack of courtesy did to a couple of drivers in Russia, a country that is just now experiencing the frustrations of traffic backups and gridlock at intersections.
The clip is funny in a sense, but illustrates graphically how a lack of courtesy grows into outright maliciousness.
Many years ago, Walt Disney Studios produced a cartoon about drivers and their personality changes that occurred when they took the wheel. The main character is a mild-mannered guy (Goofy) who becomes a raging demon behind the wheel. His normal courtesy and hesitancy vanishes and in a Jeckel and Hyde transformation, he becomes a red-eyed monster when he gets into traffic. He cuts people off, races away from traffic lights and is a poor, inconsiderate driver in general. Of course this activity ends up in a collision.
The Disney cartoon is intended to be both funny and informative. It is both, with the red-eyed driver being a parody of what really happens on highways throughout the world. So, when you get behind the wheel of your ride, think a little more about your actions, be more attentive to your driving and what is going on around you and you’ll probably survive to drive again.
Level 2, 9 Help Street