Should Safety Technology Be Standard in All Vehicles?

Cars have been on a constant journey to get safer and safer since they first hit the ground decades ago. Manufacturers work to develop new technology and features that make driving a car safer necessity for those who use it, and for those around them. From vehicles with self-braking technology to complete autonomous driving, we are now seeing new innovations in car safety at an unprecedented speed.

With how many car accidents happen annually across the country, let alone the world, it seems logical that safety would be a car manufacturer’s biggest concern. Despite the new innovations in safety, the truth is that profit, as opposed to safety, is usually prioritized. Features that are especially new, interesting, and helpful, aren’t always standard with new vehicles. Even with the new technology in place the safeguards are not foolproof. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently published data that found “nearly 400 crashes in the United States in 10 months involved cars using advanced driver-assistance technologies,” per the New York Times.

It’s not that these systems weren’t created with the best intentions in mind (even with profit being the ultimate goal of the manufacturers). Safety is safety; anything that makes vehicles safer is a good thing. That being said, because most advanced driver-assistance systems are relatively new, they aren’t exactly bug-free. Since these bugs often impact essential vehicle functions, they can cause accidents just as easily as preventing them.

But does that mean no cars should have them? Not necessarily. When these safety systems do work, they can and do save lives. The most common features include forward collision warning, autonomous emergency braking, lane departure warning, blind spot warning, and adaptive cruise control. Any one of these only has to work once to prevent a deadly accident.

The pros and cons of advanced driver-assistance systems

As you can see, there are pros and cons to weigh when looking at the advance and implantation of car safety system. Some additional benefits to advanced driver-assistance systems are:

• Vehicles equipped with ADAS do seem to be safer, according to recent studies. They show a 27% reduction in bodily injury claim frequency, and reduced crash frequency by 3.5%.
• Many of these systems, such as automatic brake systems, use a multitude of cameras and sensors to analyze as many dangers as possible. They may catch potential accidents the human eye would miss.
• Not every system takes full control of the car. Some, such as forward collision warning, merely alarm or buzz drivers into performing a specific action themselves. This shows a future where technology and humans can work together to make cars as safe as possible.
• Systems do not get distracted, thereby eliminating one of the most common cause of car accidents.
• The systems only need to be safer than humans to make a difference. Think about how many car accidents humans have been responsible for. Any removal of human error can only do good in the long term. Even if malfunctions happen, they still happen far less often than regular collisions.

The drawbacks of driver-assistance systems are just as important to the analysis:

• There is a lot of room for malfunction. Anything that covers a sensor (such as bad weather) or a camera may cause certain features to stop working.
• AI technology may misjudge certain factors in dangerous ways. Automatic emergency braking is notorious for braking upon seeing shadows in the road. Conversely, malfunctions may cause features not to sense obstacles at all.
• Some safety features do not work as well at higher speeds or at night, circumstances which are already more risky than driving at slow speeds during the daytime.
• Some early reports are starting to connect hundreds of accidents with ADAS vehicles, highlighting just how little we still know about how safe any of this technology truly is.
• In a similar vein, many studies are still being researched and written. There is a lot of data, both good and bad, that simply hasn’t been collected or tracked yet. Such a large grey area is going to have a decent amount of risk involved.

At the end of the day, it does still seem like the pros of ADAS vehicles outweigh the cons. There is no way to guarantee nothing will malfunction, but as long as we don’t solely rely only on technology (check your mirrors, watch your speed, and pay attention) we can still benefit. Meanwhile, many studies will continue to monitor those programs that are currently in place and those to come.  For the sake of safety, manufacturers should make a feature standard on all vehicles once proven to be safe.

Help for Tulsa car accident victims with serious injuries

Car accidents can be minor events that only leave the parties involved disgruntled and inconvenienced, and they can be major catastrophes that change lives forever. Here in Tulsa, we tend to, unfortunately, see the latter. In 2020, Tulsa County alone saw over 5,000 people injured in a car accident of some sort, including dozens of fatalities. In 2021, the United States as a whole saw a markable rise in traffic fatalities and injuries — a 10.5% increase.

For those who survive their accident, they may suffer a multitude of expensive, serious injuries such as:

• Broken or shattered bones
• Paralysis (due to spinal cord injury or other nerve damage)
• Traumatic brain injuries, including concussions
• Damage to internal organs
• Loss of limb or amputation
• Muscle, ligament, and tissue damage

When victims face injuries like these, be it one or a combination of several, they need thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of medical care and treatments. On top of amassing those large medical bills, they may be entirely unable to work — for some, the inability to return to work may be permanent.  They should not be forced to pay for any of this when it is someone else’s negligent actions that caused their injuries.

If you’re injured in a car accident near Tulsa due to someone else’s reckless or negligent driving, you should act fast to hire an aggressive personal injury attorney to pursue those who are responsible. Once we prove liability and negligence, every single injury-related expense and loss of income can be compensated, and you can let yourself focus entirely on recovery. The Tulsa car accident attorneys at Biby Law Firm have years and years of combined experience advocating for the rights and compensation of accident victims, and we know how to help you too. We proudly serve clients throughout the state, including Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Bixby, Claremore, Jenks, Owasso, Sand Springs, Sapulpa, Wagoner, Muskogee, and the surrounding areas. For a free consultation, call us today at 918-574-8458 or use our contact form.