| Is Too Much Safety a Bad Thing? |
3/27/07 |
At a recent conference I made a presentation on the future of fleet safety and vehicle technology that will make the vehicles of the future the safest ever on the road. During the question and answer portion of my presentation, a person asked me the following.
“Do you feel that the new safety technology will create a situation where the driver becomes reliant and/or over-confident with the safety technology resulting in poorer driving habits?”
What a great question. Before I share my response, let’s take a look at types of safety technology.
Lane Departure Warning Systems. Computer-operated alert system warns drivers when drifting out of their lane.
Electronic Stability Control. A system that applies brakes to individual wheels of a vehicle when instability is detected.
Collision Mitigation Braking. Radar that automatically applies the brakes when sensing a crash is imminent.
Tire-Pressure Monitoring. Warns drivers when a low tire or blowout is detected.
REM Systems. Rapid Eye Movement systems that can detect if you are about to fall asleep while driving.
If you would like to take a closer look at one of these really cool systems, check out Volvo’s system to avoid rear-end collisions.
So on to my response. I do have some concern that drivers will become a little too lazy behind the wheel and think that the car will handle the accident avoidance for them, but I am not overly concerned. First of all, you would need to have all of the above systems and more on a vehicle to eliminate all possible risk of an accident happening. I just don’t see that happening soon. I also don’t feel that the majority of vehicles on the road will be equipped with this technology making for one big happy safe system of drivers that don’t need to stay alert and be responsible behind the wheel.
I am interested in your thoughts. What do you think?
If you had a collision mitigation braking system would you follow closer to the car in front of you knowing that the technology will stop the accident from happening?
Would you take the chance of driving while extremely fatigued knowing the REM system would alert you and wake you back up?
Or if you have electronic stability control right now, do you find yourself driving with a bit more confidence?
Sound off on this subject. Does the technology make you take more risk?
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