Breaking news (yea, right): Distracting driving may account for most accidents
What follows
should come as absolutely no surprise to any of our readers who have passed drivers' education. According to a recent
study, 4 out of every 5 crashes may be attributable to driver distraction. The work performed by the National Highway
Transportation Safety Adminstration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, points out that approximately 80
percent of all crashes and 65 percent of "near-crashes" occur a mere three seconds after a driver
becomes distracted. The most common distraction is - wait for it - the use of a mobile phone, which along
with reading and applying make-up increases the chances of a crash by a factor of three. Reaching for a moving object
brings with it a whopping nine-fold increase in the odds of experiencing a collision, and driving while drowsy
quadruples the likelihood of a crash.
The parties involved in the study used instrumentation to track the driving behavior of 241 drivers for more than a year.
We here at Autoblog eagerly wait for the day when abritrary enforcement of speed limits is replaced with a system that punishes drivers who aren't paying attention to the task at hand.
[Source: CNN.com]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
salguod 9:09PM (4/21/2006)
"We here at Autoblog eagerly wait for the day when abritrary enforcement of speed limits is replaced with a system that punishes drivers who aren't paying attention to the task at hand."
Me too, but don't hold your breath. Hard to make money that way.
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Mouhamad Naboulsi 1:48AM (4/24/2006)
Solution at hand, NHTSA refuses to evaluate
Driver distraction is a problem I experienced when my 71 olds had an FM adaptor located way too low and each time I reached it my steering wheel was moved in one direction or another as a result of normal bio-feedback reflex, yep a mouthful.
After few years in college and as a result of other traffic frustrations, I came up with a solution that I refined ever since 1985.
Basically, the solution consist of a PC in a car with "THREE HOT BUTTONS FOR EMERGENCY SERVICES", (Sounds familiar?), and two controls on the steering wheels (At 10:02 where the hands should be), to control everything in the car, including HVAC/RADIO, POWERSEATS Navigation and yes, car phone as it was called at the time.
My first prototype was built the same year and I refined it ever since and recently received one patent and still awaiting the second patent. The patent covers unscheduled communication interrupting driver at a bad time as well as the controls noted above.
In 2004 I contacted everyone at NHTSA I thought may have an interest in my project, but I was not a PhD or well published, so that went no where. In a letter to NHTSA Director Dr. Runge,in 2004, I asked them to evaluate the product but their Chief engineer refused stating that NHTSA does not evaluate propriety technologies!! BUT if you go to http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-12/pubs_rev.html, you'll see that they evaluated Nissan Laser Collision Avoidance System. The same guy refused to hear about my video library and my research stating that NHTSA does not do business with small companies.
Well, NHTSA: Let more people die while you and your buddies play video games and Candid Camera. Oh, and let's not forget to keep blaming the conversations on the cell phone for the accidents, the Insurance Companies love that so they can hike rates on all drivers, safe drivers that use hands free or reckless drivers that still use handheld.
We have a solution ready to go with 88% of surveyed said it is safer then aything on the market and 87% are willing to purchase for a price ranging from $15 to $2,200. Our solution will only cost about $250 per car with seperate cost for each additional phone/MP3 player, PDA etc. We are seeking a partner to bring it to market and out functional prototype literally blows away all those who see it. We can be contacted on www.actplace.net.
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