Car technology has been evolving over time in order to make driving safer. Automotive safety can achieve its health targets by 2030 in certain parts of the world. The safety of our roads depends on the devotion of car manufacturers to making products that ensure quality. Throughout the years, automotive designers have continued to construct plans that make cars more efficient.
Safer and more advanced vehicles allow for a decrease of accidents on the roads. The evolution of technology has led to additional safety features that protect a car’s passengers. There are a variety of features such as “backup cameras and sensors, lane detection systems and voice controls” (Barr 2016), that have helped bring down the rate of car accidents over time.
Technological innovations are rapidly growing to ensure safer roadways in crash countermeasures and driver assistance systems designed to keep drivers safe in their lanes with safe headways to vehicles and obstacles ahead. Therefore, improving the structure of cars can be a way to help increase automotive safety.
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The safety of roadways is also very dependent on societal behavior. Human behavior seems to be the main factor contributing to roadway accidents across the world, so it is critical to focus on making large-scale improvements within societal values. “Speeding, driving while under the influence of alcohol and other drugs, and failing to wear seatbelts” (Synopsis, 2017) are common examples that relate to human behavior that cause problems on the roads.
In order to improve these actions in the future, there needs to be campaigns, legislation, and strict enforcement put in place to decrease traffic accidents. According to NHTSA, “issues for Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) need to implement laws from Congress. These regulations allow us to fulfill our mission to prevent and reduce vehicle crashes”. (Matthew 2018)
Over the course of the years, laws have been passed by Congress to make sure the roads are safe. Laws that include banning “dark window tints, booming system, and having radar device” (Matthew 2018) in an individual’s car. Placing different campaigns relating to automotive safety will help educate consumers about the importance of vehicle maintenance and the improvement of identification of auto defects. In order to improve roadways in the future, we also need safer infrastructure through planning and design.
One of the five pillars of the UN Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2021 advocates for safer roads and mobility. In this pillar, there is an emphasis on research. Research is done through the completion and sharing of statistics by businesses for safer road infrastructure. The way the roads are built plays a significant role in road crash frequencies and the severity of the crash.
When roads are built, there are many regulations that are accomplished to make sure the road is safe to be driven on. These adjustments range from the curvature of the road, being able to see far from a distance, and the condition of the roadside. With all these settings to ensure a safe road, it helps reduce the number of accidents caused by the infrastructure of the road. The change in the way infrastructure of roads are being built has had a major effect in the past decade in crash prevention and injury reductions.
Road infrastructure plays a vital role in road safety in preventing accidents and injuries on the roadways. There are many emerging concerns about automotive safety, one of them relating to autonomous driving. Self-driving cars are led by computer devices. It may have a “minor computer malfunction and cause a worse crash than one caused by humans”. (Heerden, 2018)
The use of these cars can cause many problems on the roadways by being hacked and “controlled by someone else, issue of liability, cannot interpret human signal, tackle driving in severe weather condition”. (Heerden, 2018) Through new inventions, different laws placed, and a way to control human behavior, the concerns for automotive safely will decrease.
