Drivers at fault for almost all crashes

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2007 (6752 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE other day I was guest speaker at the local Rotary club, and decided to take a slightly different tack in my presentation. Road safety and driver training are both arenas that have a strong performance orientation. They are also subject to massive layers of bureaucracy, as well as mind-numbing statistics. I thought it a good occasion to examine some of those figures to see where they fit into the overall picture.

Let’s start with 94 per cent. This is the number commonly quoted as being the percentage of North Americans who believe they are either good or better than average drivers. It may well be correct, but only because there is no commonly accepted standard by which driving skill is measured. Therefore, it is left to self-appointment or ego, but otherwise has no basis in reality. It would be the equivalent of someone claiming to be a master chef when only being able to prepare boiled hotdogs and macaroni.

Our next magic number, 50 per cent, is the amount of a car’s true capabilities that an average driver is able to use in an emergency such as a sudden swerve. Based on years of observing students in advanced driving schools, I would say this is not far from the mark. People fail because they are either too tentative or substitute aggression for technique.

Thirty per cent is the ratio of road fatalities earlier in the century attributed to mechanical failure. It doesn’t really matter if this number is accurate. It serves to represent that motor vehicles are far more reliable these days than they were in the past. Currently that failure number is closer to two per cent, and the majority of those come from under-inflated tires or poor maintenance procedures. Wheels generally don’t fall off, nor do brake systems fail completely, although any modern racing driver will have experienced both of these things on the track, where mechanical bits are under maximum stress.

The latest statistics on the effects of distraction attribute up to 80 per cent of all crashes, as well as 65 per cent of near-misses, to distracted drivers. Once again, use that as a representation and you’ll get the message. Anything a driver does, from turning to check on baby, grabbing for a spilling coffee cup, to making eye contact with passengers, is time not spent in full control of the vehicle. If drivers monitored their own levels of distraction, the result might be frightening enough to encourage greater focus on the task of piloting a moving vehicle safely.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 9,600 lives could be saved each year in the United States once electronic stability is installed on all cars. Our Canadian numbers, adjusted proportionately, are still significant. A lovely thought, but ultimately unlikely to happen. As a species, we consistently manage to live up to our ambitions, or down to diminished expectations. Various government agencies desperately want us to hand over control of our vehicles to benevolent technology, but that is not likely to save us from ourselves. Since a single life lost on our streets and highways is one too many, I prefer Sweden’s “Vision Zero” approach, which takes a comprehensive view of reducing traffic fatalities. Pinning hopes on one technological advance is like planting the same crop everywhere and hoping nothing goes wrong.

The final number in this essay is 99 per cent. That, theoretically, is the amount of crashes that are ultimately avoidable if everybody drives to their ability, instead of trundling along in a zoned-out haze. The remaining percentage point could be attributed to rockslides, heart attacks, alien abductions, or just bad luck.

Forget the 94 per cent we started with, and bear in mind that each of us, from Granny to Mario Andretti, is only as good a driver as the amount of attention we are bringing to the task.

Alan Sidorov is an experienced automotive racer, product tester and freelance journalist. You can contact Alan through the website below.

www.spdt.ca