Smarter Vehicle Shopping Versus Smart Driving

An article recently brought out the fact that although crash fatalities and injuries are decreasing, they are not decreasing due to improved driving but due to safer vehicles. They needed to make that official? Isn’t that sort of common knowledge?

If there was any question of how the general public drives, all one would have to do to get the answer would be to take a drive yourself and to pay attention. There is a multitude of near misses to watch for in town alone, mostly from other careless drivers; cars backing out of driveways, cars running stop signs or lights, drivers gassing it to pass an obstruction when there is no time to do so before an opposing car comes.

On the highway, there is a few true accidents like a popping tire that requires good driving ability to prevent crash accidents from occurring. But that is not even measurable when compared to the amount of careless driving. You know not everyone turns on their turn signal, or even looks, when changing lanes. Some people can’t even seem to drive in a single lane, but seem to require two. Its really sad when you look to see that it is only ten o’clock in the morning but the person ahead of you is driving like they’re drunk.

Whether that is the best of their driving ability I dare to guess, but I do know there is a lot of carelessness going on. Some of the things that drivers do is; talk on cell phones, read maps, letters or books, have fist fights with passengers, picking things up off the floor, eating while holding the steering wheel with their knees, or even hold the steering wheel with one hand while giving a baby in back a bottle or toy.

Maybe cars should have auto-pilot? After all, safe vehicles are saving people, not people. There is one slight problem with this solution. It teaches us that if people aren’t going to smarten up, at least technology will do it for us. Maybe that is why there is so many warning labels out there, because we have gotten too lazy to learn and remember anything for ourselves. We require someone to think for us.

I guess this is why there was a need for someone to officially tell us that driving skills generally seem to be the same as ten years ago.

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