Are Drivers Getting Worse at, y’know, Driving?
So, driving, eh? As a society, we’ve been doing it for a pretty damn long time. So you’d think that, by now, we’d have reduced car accidents to record lows. But that doesn’t seem to have been the case. For all our advancements in car technology in recent years, we’re still seeing an alarming amount of car accidents. In fact, deadly car accidents saw their biggest spike in half a century in 2015. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have confirmed it. You can check out the report at http://nhtsa.gov.
After fifty years of consistently declining fatalities year by year, we’re now seeing increases year by year. In another recent report, the NHTSA also confirmed that the first half of 2016 saw a 10.4% increase in traffic deaths since 2015. This is a bad omen – it’s a higher increase than the 7.2% that 2015 saw over 2014.
So has everyone just gotten worse at driving, or something?
Nostalgia
So why did it seem that safety was increasing for so long in the first place? Well, the automotive advancements in the last few decades were tremendous. Much bigger than today, when you think about it. Seatbelts seem boring now, but their widespread introduction in the sixties was revolutionary. Technological advancements used to genuinely be about safety. Now it seems that advancements are just there to show off. Speaking of which…
Let’s just blame phones and be done with it
Did you know that Snapchat can record how fast you’re going in a vehicle? That Google and Waze encourage you to use their navigation apps on the road? That Pokémon Go lets you search for Pokémon on the highway? I’m not saying that it’s the fault of these app companies. But people have always been easily distracted by phones on the road. With all these apps, people seem to just find it easier to get distracted. Read more about Snapchat and driving at http://wfla.com.
The problem with other drivers
Of course, how many of these fatal accidents were the fault of the deceased? A lot of people tend to focus on the blame on those who died. But the majority of victims weren’t actually to blame. It should be remembered that it’s mathematically sound to assume that most victims weren’t at fault. After all, the fault will rest with one out of the two drivers of cars involved in accidents. Once you include passengers and pedestrians, it’s easy to see that it’s largely the faults of others that result in injury and death. If you’ve been involved in an accident that wasn’t your fault, check out http://lvaccident.com.
An increase in drivers
Some people would be willing to blame the sheer increase in drivers. Americans are now driving more than ever. On the whole, it’s getting easier for people with steady incomes to afford cars than ever. With more drivers on the road, are more accidents inevitable? Read more at https://scientificamerican.com.
But hey. Maybe it’s all just an increase in weed and speed metal that’s distracting drivers these days.