The Engineer's Lament: Two ways of thinking about auto safety
Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 8:51 pm
May 4, 2015: New Yorker: Interesting article about auto safety by Malcolm Gladwell.
The Engineer's Lament: Two ways of thinking about automotive safety
A very interesting presentation of the many issues surrounding automotive safety. A must read for anyone in accident reconstruction and highway safety. Read about some of the very high profile safety cases since the 70's.
Our media focus on sensational crashes which may ultimately not improve safety as many end up being statistically insignificant safety issues.
some items missed:
The Engineer's Lament: Two ways of thinking about automotive safety
A very interesting presentation of the many issues surrounding automotive safety. A must read for anyone in accident reconstruction and highway safety. Read about some of the very high profile safety cases since the 70's.
- The Pinto gas tank
The Cobolt ignition switch
Honda Airbags
Prius sudden acceleration
Our media focus on sensational crashes which may ultimately not improve safety as many end up being statistically insignificant safety issues.
- And my apologies to those individuals who's lives were lost and their families...i mean no disrespect...this article is about the difficulties in sorting through the massive amounts of information to be available to focus on identifying what might save the most lives when dealing with vehicle safety issues
- speeding
- (more penalties might discourage speeding which seems to be a factor in many high profile cases)
- (he didn't ask why haven't they raised the 9-14 MPH firing speed which was 'invented' to try to accommodate folks without seat belts, where it should be at 30 MPH or more when wearing seat belts since they are fine up to 30 MPH and bags have killed in lower speed collisions)
- (like why don't we train for 2 foot driving, would prevent pedal mis-identification and therefore reduction in sudden acceleration cases!)
- (raise the price of booze and DUI incidents go down (maybe the drunks can't afford the booze AND gas?))
some items missed:
- (no mention of the NBC Dateline side saddle faked exploding gas tanks)
- (no mention of the 60 minute faked sudden acceleration Audi 5000 destruction!)