How your hi-tech car dashboard can kill you
Distracted drivers blamed for thousands of deaths
SAFETY campaigners are urging car makers to limit the number of hi-tech dashboard gadgets that distract drivers from the road.
They want Britain to adopt guidelines similar to those just introduced in the US – where distracted drivers are being blamed for thousands of road accident deaths.
The guidelines include limiting the time a driver must take his eyes off the road to perform any task to two seconds at a time.
In America, the authorities say the problem is already ‘ a deadly epidemic’ and UK road safety experts fear it could reach similar proportions here.
In the US more than 3,000 death were attributed to distracted drivers in one year alone.
In Britain, the Institute of Advanced Motorists says new cars are filled with so many hi-tech gadgets such as sat-nav and ‘info-
‘Devastating consequences’s
tainment’ systems that they have become ‘living rooms on wheels’.
They say car-makers in Britain and Europe should be subject to the same sort of voluntary ‘distraction guidelines’ introduced in the US last week.
These recommend disabling several operations unless the vehicle is stopped, including manual text entry for messaging and internet browsing; video-based entertainment and communications such as video conferencing and display of certain types of text, including text messages.
The US government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recommendations also ‘limit the time a driver must take his eyes off the road to perform any task to two seconds at a time and 12 seconds total’. These voluntary guidelines are to be phased in over the next three years.
US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said: ‘Distracted driving is a deadly epidemic that has devastating consequences on our nation’s roadways.
‘Combined with good laws, good enforcement and good education, these guidelines can save lives.’ US Federal data figures showed in 2011 that accidents involving a distracted driver led to 3,331 deaths.
A study by the NHTSA showed that visual-manual tasks associated with hand-held phones and other portable devices trebled the risk of a crash. Text messaging doubled the risk of a crash or near- crash with the driver’s eyes being off the road for an average of 23.3 seconds.
Sarah Sillars of the IAM, the UK’s largest independent road safety charity, warned: ‘Efforts to reduce distraction factors for motorists are being undone by the relentless pace of technology and eagerness of car makers to pack more gadgets on to dashboards. We cannot allow the same trends in the USA to happen here.
‘While car makers work constantly to incorporate active and passive safety features into vehicles, they are also guilty of making us feel more cosseted – like we were in our own living rooms.’