"The quest to make cars safer has had an unintended consequence -- the creation of legions of unsafe drivers."
As the saying goes, guns don't kill people; people do. The same reasoning can be applied to automobiles. After all, in most cases, it's not the car that causes an accident, but the person driving it. Why, then, do we put so much emphasis on never-ending improvements in vehicular performance, while largely ignoring the skill and judgment of the one behind the wheel?
"While the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration wastes time ginning up elaborate new rules to make cars 'safer,' less and less is being required of drivers in terms of skill," reports automotive writer Eric Peters in a recent issue of the Washington Times. The result, he concludes, is "an increasing proportion of people, not cars, who are unsafe at any speed."
The problem of motorists continually lowering their driving standards to offset the increasing safety of their vehicles is only going to get worse. Peters warns that "capabilities are being built into new cars that make it tempting to try things that years ago would have been unthinkable on a public road." He argues that "bad driving combined with too much car is at the root of most accidents" and insists that "the gadgets so beloved by the safety gurus" are an inducement to bad driving.
Peters cites anti-lock brakes as an example. "By making a car more controllable in extreme driving, anti-lock brakes tempt many drivers to 'push the envelope' beyond their abilities and common sense. The kind of inches-away tailgating that's ubiquitous today was rarely seen 20 years ago," he contends, "for one simple reason: Even the most arrogant driver appreciated the reality of certain disaster if that car ahead of him slowed down abruptly. So he backed off a little and gave himself room to slow down. People didn't barrel along at ridiculously inappropriate speeds on crowded highways, either," Peters adds, "because they knew that, if it became necessary to stop, they weren't going to make it."
Peters charges that anti-lock brakes "can actually make some folks drive in ways that increase the likelihood of an accident." The same can be said of other supposed safety devices. Peters notes that "suspension and tire technology has progressed to the point where four-door sedans are capable of maneuvers that 20 years ago were exclusively the territory of high-performance sports cars." The typical daredevil driver, unfortunately, is more likely to have the skills of Al Bundy than Al Unser.
Peters concludes that "add-ons like airbags and crumple zones are . . . masking an underlying problem: Any half-wit can get a license after driving around a supermarket parking lot for five minutes and taking an irrelevant written test that's a useless gauge of ability behind the wheel." What's the sense in trying to fool-proof a car if it only makes the driver more foolish?
