Technology = Car Safety?

In the last three decades, the incidence of traffic crash fatalities and injuries has been reduced significantly in the high-income countries but not in the low- and middle-income countries. The traffic patterns in the former are not only different but are also less complex than those in the latter. Traffic in low-income countries comprises a much higher share of vulnerable road users and so vehicles, roads and the environment have to be designed for their safety. Solutions for such problems are not readily available and very innovative work needs to be done around the world to arrive at new policies and designs. In addition to crashworthiness of vehicles, transportation planning, exposure control, intelligent separation of non-motorized traffic on major roads, and traffic calming are likely to play a much more important role.

I've been having a discussion with some folks recently about the safety of the older cars of the 60s/70s versus the cars of today. I was siding with the advancement of today's safety technologies such as airbags, smarter seatbelt systems, crumple zones, reinforced doors, stronger/lighter materials, etc saying that they provide a much safer vehicle than the steel behemoths. Their side is, of course, the opposite basically saying that the size, weight, materials used in making the car (think lots of steel was used back in the day) provide for a safer vehicle in comparison to today's cars. Let’s say, if you take a 60's car and crash it into a Hyundai at 60mph the little car will bounce off like a super ball the airbag will keep you alive until the engine meets with you. The tiny car conversely will act as crumple zone for the steel bohemoth decelerating it harmlessly. If you employ shoulder belt technology in the steel monster you will probably fair better. Of course your chances of avoiding an accident are probably better in the nimble car, when cars of equal mass hit your chances are better in the little car with airbags.

Technology and human behavior can influence the effectiveness of safety policies. In the field of traffic safety, rational-choice theorists postulate that automobile safety devices induce increased driver risk taking. Such behavioral responses could partly or totally nullify the lifesaving potential of governmental safety rules for new cars, such as the crashworthiness standards adopted by the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This study explores the behavioral-response hypothesis in the context of a car-vintage model of U.S. car occupant death rates. Results from the model imply that U.S. standards have reduced the occupant death rate by roughly 30 percent, a finding consistent with minimal driver response to safety devices.



By,
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Source:
i. John D. Graham(1984), Technology, Behavior, and Safety: An Empirical Study of Automobile Occupant-Protection Regulation, School of Urban and Public Affairs, Carnegie-Mellon University
ii. Cavaliere D., Simonot-Lion F., Song Y.-Q., Hembert O., A Component Model Approach for Modeling and Validation of an Automated Manufacturing System, in Actes de 8th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, Antibes – Juan les Pins, 15-18 October 2001.
iii. Dinesh Mohan(2002), http://ije.oxfordjournals.org