Start a conversation about car crashes, deaths on the roads, traffic jams and all of a sudden everybody’s an expert. Try to do the same thing with other areas of expertise such as new drug development or the most cost effective way to reach Mars and there’s a distinct difference. It may be that we are all drivers and very few of us plan to travel to space in the near future.
It’s actually good that people are well opinionated on the subject, hey, who knows from whom the next great idea on the reduction of car crashes will come. The Edison of safety may be among us right now, they may have no diploma or PhD attached to their name, but may hold the key for reducing one of the top causes for deaths worldwide. Car crashes are a worldwide problem, so any educated suggestions are welcome.
Road fatalities are not a new thing, and did not start with the introduction of cars to the road. Horses, carriages and most other moving things sharing the road with other vehicles and pedestrians have been ending people’s lives for a very long time.
We can safely assume that once you crowd multiple people in multiple modes of transport, with different skills and attitudes, going in different directions over the same narrow space of a road, someone is going to get hurt. This is a constant.
What has been changing over the last 100 years or so, is the definition of why these unwanted occurrences take place. I mean, it’s not that people go out there to drive and plan to kill or be killed.
Initially, the blame was placed at the doorstep of the machine. Remember those Starsky and Hutch TV episodes? What did the bad guys do if they wanted to rid of somebody without getting caught? They tampered with the brakes of their opponent’s car. Vehicle malfunctions were common, so road deaths by faulty brakes or other technical failure were believed to be a probable cause.
Soon machines became pretty reliable, so the blame was shifted to the infrastructure. The roads were blamed, not enough light, signs or space; so the roads were improved. Regardless, those persistent drivers just couldn’t help from bumping into each other.
As human beings, we must have a cause for what is happening around us or to us, so the hot potato was placed in the hands of the human factor, i.e. the driver. You see, if the car was not to blame, and the road is acceptable, then it must be that piece of complex neurons holding the wheel who is to blame.
This is where we are today; we truly believe the driver is most responsible for crashes. That is why we see such major investments in two key areas. One is figuring out how to better teach drivers to drive. The second is going back to the machine, designing more complex and sophisticated solutions that can either protect the driver in a crash or help her avoid it in the first place.
The connecting point between education and technology wizardry is the driver. At the end of the day, until cars become trains driving on their own, the driver will have a say how the car is driven. So focusing on the driver and their choices plays a key part in the quest for crash reduction.
Which is why for me, safety can be boiled down to one concept: choice. We can educate drivers; we can provide them with fully dressed cars containing all possible driving aids. But at the critical moment it is up to the driver to choose how to drive. As a decision, are you a safe driver or not? Because even with the best driving education and with the best technology in the world one can still decide to drive recklessly.
So what do I talk about when I talk about safety? When I meet with parents, teens, councilors and decision makers, I talk about choice. And this choice goes beyond the choices drivers make when they drive. It’s the choice of the parent of the teen driver to be more involved in his kids driving; it’s the choice of the organization to provide its fleet managers and health and safety managers with better tools, it’s the choice of governments to invest in driver education.
The cause of crashes in today’s roads is not due to lack of technology, road quality or driver education (because even in countries with solid driver education programs, teens are still the highest risk group). The cause of crashes today is our ability, or lack of, to make the right choice as individuals and as a society. Do we want to be safe or not?
Make the right choice, it’s worth it,
Hod Fleishman
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