Who Needs Naders? We Have Cyborgs!

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

Yesterday, TTAC’s daily news editor Aaron Cole wrote an editorial calling for a new Ralph Nader to arise and save us from our own refusal to make appropriate safety-related automotive choices. I found the article fascinating, not least because one of my first editorials for TTAC was a skeptical look at the benefits of so-called “advanced driver training”. In that editorial, I argued that the decision to purchase a safe car was far more critical to crash survivability than any amount of special training would be. I then proceeded to prove my own point by selling my Phaetons, buying a Lincoln Town Car, and experiencing an incident (direct, high-speed perpendicular impact to my passenger door) that would have been trivial in said Phaetons but which was crippling in the aforementioned Town Car.

Since then, my thoughts on road safety have primarily centered around the idea of risk reduction. I believe that if you cancel or modify your riskiest trips, you’ll see tangible benefits from doing so. I don’t put my son in the car with me unless I have a specific agenda in mind to minimize risk from that trip. My goal is to reduce his exposure, which means no unnecessary trips, no bad-weather trips, and no trips without a plan.

On the other hand, this past year I put about half of my commuting mileage on motorcycles. That tilts my overall risk profile pretty far away from “safe”. It has, however, allowed me a front-row seat for all sorts of traffic incidents and accidents, playing out in full widescreen all around me.

For those reasons, I’m inclined to disagree with Aaron a little bit when it comes to the role of the government and/or quasi-governmental activists to improve vehicle safety. I’ll explain.

Aaron starts his discussion by painting a picture of “increasingly distracted” drivers whose insane desire to juggle apps and social media and Internet access while they drive has made them active menaces to everyone around them. While this is an extremely popular view of current affairs, it is one with almost no evidence to support it. Sure, everybody in your office has a story of somebody who was hit by a “distracted driver”, but in my youth everybody in the office had a story about someone who was “thrown clear” and survived a deadly accident because they were smart enough to not wear those crazy seatbelts.

The most rabidly partisan statistics possible can’t pin more than 3,200 deaths a year on distraction of all types. Your risk of being killed by another driver due to distraction is only eight times or so greater than your risk of being struck by lightning in the United States. You’re more likely to choke to death in any given year than you are to be killed by a distracted driver. Viewed in the context of statistical significance across the entire population of the United States, we should be very nearly as concerned about scorpions and black-widow spiders as we are about distracted driving.

Which is not to say that we should not discourage distracted driving as a society; it’s just not necessarily worth the all-hands-on-deck treatment it’s getting from the auto industry. Truth is that we’re probably at the very top of this fad right now, what with the increasing legality of marijuana and whatnot. My guess is that reefer-madness-style MADD posturing will erase distracted driving from the national consciousness the way that distracted driving has wiped drunk driving off the headlines despite being considerably less deadly.

Aaron then goes on to cite a J.D. Power study that suggests that young drivers are willing to pay $3,703 per car purchase for safety features. The survey itself, however, notes that the $3,703 figure includes all tech items, not just safety tech, and that the desire for “self-healing paint” is as strong as the desire for collision mitigation. Aaron’s suggestion is that all this safety tech should be made mandatory by government decree, since young people would like to have some of it anyway.

It’s true that the American government’s decision to write everything from seatbelts to ABS into law has manifestly helped safety. It’s also true that the government has also supported some pretty bad ideas (third brake lights, “passive” seatbelts that didn’t work as well as standard belts) and forced some iffy compromises into production just shortly before they’d have been standard anyway. The problem is that the low-hanging safety fruit has long been plucked. If the government were to make any of the newest safety technologies mandatory, it would effectively be picking winners — and haven’t we had enough of that, from banks to automakers to guitar builders, in the past decade?

What would an enlightened NHTSA mandate for 2020? Lane-keep assist? Emergency braking? Night vision? If you choose any of those individually, you’re offering a hand up to the automakers who “bet the right way” when developing features. If you mandate them all, you’re still stymied by the fact that all the technologies involved are so infantile as to not have their performance easily quantified. You’re in the position of the Department of Defense making jet-fighter specs in 1939. What would be the minimum specs for Lane-Keep? What if Mercedes-Benz and Honda disagree on how violent the emergency-brake application should be?

From the focus on safety equipment, Aaron bounces back to drivers:

Likewise, even though fatal crashes are proportionately declining, year-over-year, the least-reliable components of cars — drivers — are still the least regulated.

To be safe at any speed, it’s clear that automakers should be held to a higher standard to reduce human interaction or increase driver attention.

The cynic in me wants to yell, “WHAT ABOUT BOTH, HUH? HOW ABOUT MAKING THE WHOLE CAR AUTONOMOUS AND STILL MAKING SOME POOR BASTARD SIT IN THE ‘DRIVER’ SEAT WITH HIS EYES PEELED OPEN LIKE A CLOCKWORK ORANGE AND THE SAME PERIODIC SHOCKS TO THE CORTEX THEY GAVE HARRISON BERGERON? IS THAT ENOUGH?” But then I return to reality. And in the American reality, there is not going to be any improvement in driver’s education, nor will American drivers get any “better”. Save your leather-fetishist fantasies of outrageously expensive Swedish driver’s licenses that include two years’ worth of skidpad training and a mandatory WRC podium. That’s not how America works. It’s also not how Europe will work once the the majority of the population adheres to sharia law. Ask the British how easy it is to get a massive extra-cultural immigrant base to obey homegrown motor-vehicle regulations of any kind.

If the American driver cannot be improved, then he must be stripped of his power to guide the car. Yet that cannot be done — not yet. The autonomous vehicle, as it exists now, is basically a terrified senior citizen. It doesn’t see very well, it isn’t always certain where it is, it has trouble interacting with other traffic in a predictable manner, and it slows down the traffic around it. Its primary virtue, as with a terrified senior citizen, is the low speed at which it operates. So we could obtain all these safety benefits for Americans in a heartbeat by making 25 mph the maximum speed limit off the freeways and 45 mph the limit on limited-access roads. Presto, watch deaths from traffic collisions disappear even as deaths from road-rage murders skyrocket.

But if you insist on using present day, off-the-shelf technology, then autonomous driving is still the technology of the future and it will be for quite some time to come.

So what’s left? How can this tide of traffic-related blood be turned? You know the answer to that: it’s already been turned. Traffic accidents go down every year and fatalities drop even as the population of the country increases, the speed limits go up on toll roads, and the base model family cars come with the same kind of power you got from an IROC-Z in 1988. The existing methodology is sufficient. It works and it will continue to work. New safety systems will appear and the ones that have genuine merit will be incorporated into more new cars and so on and so forth. No massive shock to the system is necessary.

Perhaps an anecdote would help, since some of the fiercest opponents of “distracted driving” love to use them. I was sitting as a passenger in my Accord yesterday, heading up to a motorcycle dealership so I could pick what bike I would buy to celebrate the return to service of my left leg circa Dec 15 or so. Ahead of us, a tractor-trailer threw a massive retread. The car heading for it, also some distance ahead of us, was some sort of Korean CUV. Its driver was looking perhaps ten feet ahead of her front bumper. When she saw the retread, she hauled away at the wheel like she was trying to drift the Titanic around a big ‘berg. Then she hauled away in the other direction.

While I watched in mild amusement, the Santa Fe or whatever it was simply ignored the driver’s commands. Instead, it rapid-braked its way back into stability, zipped around the retread, and continued forward as if nothing had happened. As a motorcyclist who commutes in dense traffic, I can tell you that something very much like this occurs in my immediate vicinity every morning and every evening of my life. Inattentive driver sees something happen ten feet away from her car. She panics. The car figures it out.

The driver, therefore, is a complete idiot. The car is usually not exactly up to Tesla or Rolls-Royce specs. But these two imperfect creatures form a cyborg of sorts. That cyborg is capable of causing fatal accidents at a rate that is low today and declines every year. And when there is a crash, the outstanding passive crash safety of the modern vehicle steps in and delivers an additional measure of safety for everyone involved. Hell, the average luxury sedan today even worries about pedestrians. What more do you want?

The true fact of the matter is that we could best address traffic fatality concerns by giving every driver in America a new Honda Civic or equivalent. Simply updating the fleet to safe, reliable vehicles with ESC and ABS would do wonders that wouldn’t be accomplished in a decade of technology mandates. But who will be the first among us to call for more free stuff? Perhaps we don’t need a new Nader to save lives, but rather a new Marx?

[Image source: Transport Canada]

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • VolandoBajo VolandoBajo on Nov 05, 2015

    I won’t read that, either. You use a lot of words to say very little, and are frankly not that interesting. --pch101 You obviously must have read it, or you wouldn't know it was there or that it mentioned you. No one needs you to repetitively post that you don't read. Your style of arguing points clearly shows that fact about you. So if you don't want to read me, just don't read me. There are a lot of posts I don't have time or the interest to read. This place would be pretty cluttered up if everyone who didn't read a post, posted to say they didn't read it. But of course, we all must NEED to know what the great a mighty pch101 thinks. Because we will be SO butt hurt if he doesn't deem us worthy to be included among those he agrees with. Though if you look closely, he doesn't agree with hardly anyone. And if you look at what he posts, it is obvious that he is incapable of looking at, and responding rationally, to anything anyone else says, especially if they have had the audacity to point out his oh so obvious lack of ability to reason, or to carry on an adult conversation with anyone who holds an opinion different from his own. And since his opinions are by and large fact-free, there aren't too many who do agree with him. Watch him come back now and say he didn't read this either. He is like those Japanese tamagochi toys...if you provide it with any input whatsoever, it will respond in some absurd way, just because that is all it is programmed to do. Tamagochi pch101, a poster who knows how to fail a Turing test.

  • VolandoBajo VolandoBajo on Nov 05, 2015

    @RobertRyan It was a bit on the long side for a summation, but thanks for the props. I realize I was jumping feet first on pch, but I am sick and tired of seeing him do that same sort of thing, time after time, and not only to me, but to more than one other person on here who show some sign of intelligence, and whom I consider to be my online friends. That, and he seems to have plumbed new depths with his theories on automotive safety. Almost seems like he just throws crap out there to annoy people, though I suppose he just might really believe that crap, too. I really don't mind if people have ideas that I think are flawed, or don't agree with. But when they refuse to cite evidence for things they cite as facts, and when they start calling people who don't agree with them names, as if he is so much superior to them that he doesn't need to have to support his opinions, I find that such an attitude is that of a loser. And when the persist, just asking for it, and it is a rainy afternoon and I am in the right mood for it, I get the feeling that it is time to take fools like him to task. And I am glad that I am not alone in that opinion. Part of what makes TTAC mostly an intelligent place to hang out is that there are a lot of fairly bright people, with a wide variety of life experience and a wide variety of opinions, on here, and most of them are willing to discuss things they disagree on. Pch on the other hand is like a little kid who creates a fuss in the pool, and when the lifeguard tells him it is time to get out, drops trou and defecates, just to be sure that no one else can enjoy the pool, if they aren't willing to put up with his tantrums. So I am glad that there are people on here beside myself who can see what a dweeb he is, and how vacuous his statements (I won't dignify them as being arguments or assertions) really are.

  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉
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