WHY ARE THERE SO MANY ACCIDENTS and
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
March 2006
I
was watching TV. A large group had gathered at an intersection where a young
woman had recently died in a car accident. She was making a left turn from a
small residential street onto a 55 mph frontage road in her Ford Focus when she
apparently failed to see the approaching Jeep Cherokee. Another roadway
fatality. Lately there have been studies by the insurance industry to answer
the question, why are there so many accidents? The industry has lately turned to
driver distraction as one of the most important factors.
The obvious question arises as to the nature of distraction itself.
If distraction is caused by certain elements in our environment, how do we
recognize these events and use them to our advantage. How do we condition
ourselves to be mindful of the task in the face of ever mounting volume of
potential distractions to which we are exposed on a daily basis? If distraction
is not environmentally controllable, how then do we harness it?
Recently I was driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas along Interstate 15.
On the way I noticed a seemingly countless array of tire scuff marks leading
from the center median, arcing steeply over to the right hand side fog line and
off the road. The scuffmarks looked to be too steeply angled for the vehicle to
be under control. These vehicles were skidding and spinning off the highway,
probably on their way to overturning on the roadside drop-off. Rollover
accidents used to be only about 10% of the total population when we drove mainly
cars. These days with light trucks of all types being used as cars, I suspect
rollovers are more prevalent as well as more injurious.
I doubt that there are many drivers that do not realize that a rollover accident
can hurt them very badly, if not kill them. And yet here on this road are
records of the hundreds of the distracted driver incidents. The driver is
so inattentive, perhaps even asleep, that they drift into the center median
before they are called back to reality by the sound of gravel striking their
chassis. Upon regaining consciousness they overcorrect and input excessive
steering to the right. This causes the vehicle to spin if not fishtail followed
by a spin. The vehicle has excessive transverse momentum, driver requested by
the over correction, and simply rotates and slides off the road to the right.
I recall an old Pogo cartoon “I have met the enemy, and he is us”. It
seems to be the nature of the human condition to fail to recognize the immensity
of the kinetic energy of a vehicle at speed. We multitask or even lull into a
relaxed doze while driving. I maintain that the reason for this can be found in
the very sophistication of what we drive. Newer vehicles drive more and
effortlessly each year. In light trucks, the recent improvement in ride quality
road isolation and handling has been remarkable, especially from Ford and GM,
the volume SUV producers. Build a taller ladder and people will climb higher.
It really is not so much sensory overload as it is complacency with the
driving experience. We have become so comfortable as drivers that we feel that
multitasking like we do at work is no big deal. Everyone has his or her own
favorite sighting on the freeway: cell phone, reading, shaving, and applying
makeup, whatever. The problem is that the density of traffic has increased
dramatically at the same time our comfort level with operating our cars has
increased. The result is that often the small period of time that a driver is
distracted can easily coincide with the time that something dangerous happens.
Further, the effortless nature of our large engine vehicles has produced a
fairly dramatic increase in the comfortable cruising speeds. Simply put, thanks
to the mature nature of road vehicle development in the 21st century, there is
less sensation of speed while at the same time cars and trucks crash more safely
than ever before. All the more reason for cruising speeds on or roads to
increase. It just feels safer.
The average vehicle weighs a great deal more that even 10 years ago, maybe
as much as 40% more. As a result we cruise faster without realizing that our
energy of motion, our kinetic energy, goes up proportionally with the mass and
the square of the velocity. For example, a family that changes from a 1997 Volvo
Station Wagon (at 3300 pounds) going at say 70 mph, to a Ford Explorer (at say,
4300 pounds) at 75 mph has increased their kinetic energy by about 50% in the
process!
The one thing that you can never beat are the laws of physics. No matter
what else happens, the energy of a crash is going to dissipate itself in either
crush of sheet metal and/or post-impact velocity of the vehicle. There are
sometimes large changes in the velocity of a vehicle at impact, which are
themselves, the injury causing mechanism in a crash. More energy dissipated
frequently results in more injury. It is just that simple.
The day-in day-out nature of our commute, the familiarity we gain with the
process and the ever increasing time it takes to commute, the increased comfort
level of our vehicles and the increased demands on our time all contribute to
the notion that it’s OK to multitask while driving. As a professional accident
analyst for nearly 20 years I believe that there exists solid evidence that
distracted driving is a major factor in accident causation. It is obviously NOT
OK to be distracted while driving.
Let us assume then, that we have established a cause and effect
relationship for traffic accidents that is responsible for a huge cost to
society. It is not just the vehicle repair - that is really the small part. It
is the pain and suffering caused in the process, not to mention the cost of
medical care, the legal action taken to recover the money and the weight of this
whole mess on our infrastructure. Is there something we can do? Even a small 10%
improvement in driver awareness with a corresponding 1% in accident reduction
would be a huge step. What if we could save just 1% of those killed in traffic
accidents each year? Who could be against such a technology?
Our first line of attack has always been to improve vehicle
crashworthiness. Next came a slew of electronic driver aids. We all have
antilock brakes by now, even light trucks. I am aware of radar-activated
automatic braking systems on the new Mercedes Benz S-Class and on the Audi A8
that will actually apply the brakes when a frontal accident is unavoidable.
Automatic seatbelt pretensioners are designed to tighten up the shoulder harness
to reduce occupant movement at impact. These approaches are good in that they
lessen the effects of an impact on the body. These kinds of improvements should
be continually developed in order to reduce both physical and financial damage.
But I believe that these systems will eventually just extend the
distraction syndrome because people will feel even safer in their vehicles and
simply drive faster an endless cycle. Why not use the radar proximity sensors on
the front corners as well as the front? A warning buzzer could sound when
the computer determines that an accident is possible and if the driver fails to
respond in a rapid enough manner, the brakes could be applied. In the fatal
accident that I saw on TV, this technology would simply apply the brakes and
override the driver’s throttle command until the Jeep had safely passed. But
this does not discourage driver distraction; it simply gives us another
electronic nanny. Still, not a bad thing. You would want your car to shut down
the engine to avoid an engine failure, and you would want your car to stop in
the road if the alternative was bodily injury.
Let’s recognize that one way to reduce driver distraction is to
increase driver involvement. Maybe we should try some incentives. How
might we attempt to entice drivers to get involved and stay there when our tools
are likely to remain as they are? We have a steering wheel, which these days is
increasingly computer interfaced. Ditto for the gas pedal. Driving constitutes a
series of small adjustments in steering and accelerator position to accommodate
changing road conditions. Failing to perform these minor adjustments while
distracted should be recognizable by a computer. There could be some small but
finite wake up call to the driver. A buzz light, the stabbing pain of a samurai
sword, something subtle. What I’m addressing is driver conditioning. When the
vehicle computer detects the lack of small steering or throttle corrections
indicating a distracted condition, the reply should be vivid but not annoying. A
dash light flash, snap, buzz or rumble, small at first and increasing in flavor,
not to startle but rather to focus, as the lack of steering wheel or accelerator
pedal correction continues in time. At some point some corrective action must be
taken such as the automatic activation of the emergency flashers to warn other
drivers that this vehicle may be out of control. If the computer recognizes an
impending accident the brakes could be applied at the appropriate time.
Fine. Now that we have a control mechanism we need to find an inducement
to pay more attention to the process of driving, as if the notion of survival
wouldn’t be enough. How about making driving interesting. Instead of a vehicle
with controls that isolate the driver as if curled up on the old couch while
getting more and more sleepy by the minute, what if the controls actually felt
like what we are driving over. Why couldn’t the steering wheel feedback of a
Buick Park Avenue, for instance, feel more like that of a BMW M3. Oh golly, the
engineers might actually have to do some work. Being an engineer myself, I
imagine that they would probably like it. That does not mean that the power
assist would have to go away. Road feel has a less to do with the power
steering, more with the isolation or the shock mounting of the steering
system. When the steering is really tuned up, it isn’t annoying. Quite the
contrary, it’s alive in your hands. It is not so much intrusive as it is
informative and interesting. The gas pedal could be the same way, and most
vehicles today have so much more power and torque than only 10 years ago that
the gas pedal is already quite a bit livelier. In short, I think we need to
spend more engineering time on the intangibles; the ergonomic feel of all of the
controls. We can start with the obvious but we need to continue with better
ergonomic recipes than we currently have. Good ergonomic design is a fundamental
thing, and simple too, really.
The dash of a car is like any other control panel and falls under the same
ergonomic guidelines. In general, when the operation of controls is more
transparent to the task, the ergonomic design is better. And obviously, the
opposite is also true. The more effort to decipher the operation of the
interface hardware, the longer it takes to get to the task at hand, and the less
successful the ergonomic design is.
Any time spent with eyes off the road or concentration from a driving
environment and refocused on vehicle controls, such as radio, cabin temperature,
or seat adjustment, etc., is an opportunity for a catastrophic event. It is
unfortunate that many of us are prone to multitask in a moving vehicle. Across
the automotive design world, companies appear to be engaged in contriving more
and more complex controls. Car designers now have an opportunity to help remove
the distractions by tuning the vehicle to be more involving to drive and to
remove the complexity of controls that distract. If it were not so scary it
would be ridiculous. Controls need to be common sense and accessible by
peripheral vision. If changing the radio channel takes more than the push of a
single button with appropriate effort and feedback, it’s too much. Let’s get
things back in hand.