The Economist (Feb 4th - 2011)IT IS remarkable how risk-conscious people have become, especially on the road. Sure, some motoring maniacs will always push their luck, causing mayhem for themselves and others—and everyone makes mistakes from time to time, gets distracted, becomes impatient and is, perhaps, not as mindful of other road users as he ought to be. Nevertheless, the statistics for traffic accidents, at least in developed parts of the world, reveal a heartening downward trend.
In the United States, for instance, the latest figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) show that 33,808 people died on American roads in 2009—the lowest level since 1950. That is still way too many personal tragedies. Even so, it represents a 9.7% decline from the figure in 2008, which was itself 9.7% lower than 2007's. The absolute number of fatalities may grab the headlines, but the more relevant statistic—the fatality rate per 100m vehicle-miles travelled—has also been inching steadily down over the past half century. In 2009, the American rate had fallen to 1.13 deaths per 100m vehicle-miles. Only Britain, Denmark, Japan, The Netherlands and Sweden fared better. For that, traffic authorities everywhere can thank the wholesale introduction of safety-belts and air-bags, as well as tougher drunk-driving laws.
As could be expected, the recession has played its part in reducing the deathly toll on the road—especially among the most vulnerable group, 16- to 24-year-olds. They have suffered most from unemployment and hence have been exposed to fewer hazards on the road. The worry is that there could be a rebound in fatalities once the recovery gets seriously underway and the young resume their reckless driving habits.
While horrifying, traffic accidents are far from being mankind’s greatest scourge. Around the world, they account for 1.2m deaths a year, compared with the 35m people who die from non-communicable illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes (5.4m of which are caused by smoking alone). According to the World Health Organisation, some 25m people all told have died in road accidents since horseless carriages took to the streets (the first such fatal accident occurred in London in 1896). That is the same as the number of people who have died over the past 30 years from AIDS.
The irony is that, while the roads are safer than ever, motorists have become more safety conscious. Back in the early 1970s, when your correspondent built a car for himself, he considered its backbone frame—made of pressed-steel sections braced with steel tubing—as state-of-the-art as far as crashworthiness was concerned. With the engine and transmission amidships, the front third of the vehicle was effectively a dedicated crumple zone. Likewise, the rear had strategically placed structural members designed to collapse on impact and mop up excess kinetic energy if shunted from behind. An added virtue was that, being a mere 1,450lb (660kg), the car had very little inertia to overcome relative to most other vehicles on the road, and thus tended to be shovelled down the highway intact when hit from behind (as has happened twice) rather than being crumpled on impact.
Today, though, he considers his beloved 39-year-old car a death trap, and won’t allow his wife or daughter to drive it or ride with him. The reason is not that he thinks it dangerous to drive. Over the decades he has upgraded—on a machine that was inherently safe to start with—the brakes, the tyres and the suspension, and made the frame torsionally even stiffer. As a result, the vehicle now has far more primary safety (the agility, stability and stopping power needed to avoid accidents) than the vast majority of modern cars.
The problem is the vehicle’s secondary safety—the ability to save occupants’ lives if the car is, despite all its primary safety, actually involved in a crash. While the car's original seat belts have been replaced with four-point harnesses, it still has no air-bags, nor any side-intrusion protection. Viewed from the side, its occupants sit within a fragile eggshell of fibreglass. Tee-boned at a crossing, they would be instant spam in a can.
That never used to enter your correspondent’s mind. Nowadays, he thinks about it every time he gets into the car. Put it down to better driver education, more graphic media coverage of road accidents, or simply old age. Yet, the likelihood of his ending his days that way is remote. Statistically, he is more likely to be murdered than to suffer a fatal side-impact.
Without question, the biggest killer stalking the roads today is driver distraction, followed by drink, speeding, fatigue, aggression and the weather. Researchers at Virginia Tech reckon 80% of crashes and 65% of near-crashes involve some form of distraction three seconds prior to the incident.
Despite the fact that it is illegal in many parts of America to use handheld phones while driving, the most common distractions behind the wheel remain texting and dialling. Motorists who text while driving increase their risk of a crash or near-crash 23-fold compared with those who do not. Reaching out for something inside the car represents a nine-fold increase in risk. Dialling causes a six-fold increase (see “Driven to distraction”, October 2nd 2009).
After much cajoling, carmakers are addressing such issues. At a recent get-together between traffic-safety officials and industry experts in Washington, DC, many of the speakers focused on preventing accidents rather than surviving them—in short, a timely re-examination of primary, instead of secondary, safety. Judging from what the NHTSA administrator, David Strickland, had to say, motorists can expect all manner of warning devices to appear inside their cars. One will beep if the driver inadvertently drifts out of lane. Another will screech when a vehicle approaches too fast from the side. Vehicles will talk to one another, warning their oblivious drivers of threats ahead. Rear-view cameras will warn when a child is playing behind a stationary vehicle.
But the technologies NHTSA is putting greatest emphasis on are those that keep intoxicated motorists off the road. Across America, a third of traffic fatalities these days are related to the use of alcohol. One system uses sensors developed by QinetiQ North America, a research and development company that spun out of the British defence establishment, that can measure a person’s blood-alcohol content through the skin. Attached to the steering wheel or the door handle, the device would stop anyone over the limit from driving home. To prevent such sensors from being thwarted by gloves, the vehicle would be activated only if the device received an actual reading of the person’s alcohol level below 0.08%.
Publicly, carmakers embrace such initiatives. Privately, they are leery of them. The added cost is one thing. Customer resistance is another. Then there are the legal liabilities resulting from all the likely false-positive responses that will doubtless lock a proportion of sober drivers out of their vehicles or incapacitate their engines in some way. Lawyers will have a field day.
The security industry has been grappling with similar questions when trying to screen for terrorists among the millions of innocent travellers at airports. The problem is that biometric systems—whether they measure blood alcohol, fingerprint geometries or facial features—do not provide binary yes/no answers like conventional digital systems. By their nature, they generate results that are probabilistic—and hence inherently fallible (see “Dubious Security”, October 1st 2010). Worse, the sensors degrade with age and their data can be corrupted by environmental factors. There are endless ways for a sensor’s accuracy to drift out of true.
Yet there is a real and urgent need for technologies that can keep habitual drunks off the road. According to NHTSA, drivers who were involved in fatal accidents and were over the limit at the time were eight times more likely to have had a prior conviction for drunken driving than drivers involved in crashes who were stone cold sober. Preventing such people from getting behind the wheel might save up to 9,000 American lives a year. Presumably, such savings in life and limb would be similar, or even better, elsewhere.
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