I remember when disc brakes and ABS anti-skid braking systems first started to appear, writes Brian Byrne, each potentially bringing us out of the scary places of unpredictable behaviour by our cars and their drivers in emergency situations. One maker offered ABS or sun-roofs as options on a high selling model, and buyers plumped overwhelmingly for the sun-roofs instead of the safety system.
Just goes to show, while we all were in favour of better motoring safety, we weren't prepared to sacrifice perceived comfort for it. Eventually the authorities made it mandatory for carmakers to include ABS on their products as standard, and the leap to the next level of safety was made. It was the same with seat-belts, until they were made an integral part of a car's equipment, and then mandatory wearing was regulated, a large cohort of drivers just weren't interested. (My father's Ford Consul, in which I learned to drive, had the first seatbelts in town — and he had to have the car structure drilled for their installation.)
We have come a long way even in my half-century of driving. We have connected cars, satellite navigation, automatic emergency braking (EAB) and a plethora of other advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). We have sensors and computer chips everywhere in our vehicles, many which we're not even aware of. Even in our smallest cars there's the availability of Level 2 autonomous driving technology (that's the stage where we still have to keep our hands on the wheel and eyes on the road). At the powertrain end, electrification is barreling on. While the internal combustion engine will continue to have a place for some time, in different markets, in places like Europe the battery electric vehicle is well on course to become dominant in short order. Many of these things have come about not just because carmakers are constantly trying to give more than their competitors, but also because regulatory authorities have insisted on them, in efforts to cut road deaths and injuries, or to mitigate the impact of transport on climate change.
One example is the European New Car Assessment Programme (ENCAP) crash test regime, which is independent of governments. Though there's no direct regulation requiring a car model to achieve a minimum or maximum number of stars, carmakers vie to reach the maximum of five all the time, not least as a marketing tool. Thing is, the goalposts are constantly being changed, and now to get five stars the model has to include a full suite of ADAS technology. The 5-star car of a decade ago would probably not achieve 2-star rating today.
Can we measure the effect of having these improved, and expensive technologies in terms of road deaths? Well, indirectly yes. For instance, in 2006 there were 365 road traffic fatalities in Ireland, but last year just 119 people lost their lives on our roads. Some of that is better traffic enforcement, but a big chunk can be from substantially safer cars. Go back further, in 1978 there were 628 fatalities, a time also when there were far fewer cars in use. And last week came joint research results from the University of Limerick and Luxembourg based scientists that suggested that installing ADAS technology on all cars could reduce the current level of road incidents by almost a quarter. In particular they found that automatic emergency braking reduces three out of four of the most frequent accident categories – intersection (by 28pc), rear-end (by 27.7pc), and pedestrian accidents (by 28.4pc). The conclusions are based on UK road statistics but the research team believe similar results could be achieved in Ireland.
That brings us to the future trends in technologically-improved safety. This is autonomous driving to the next levels, managed by artificial intelligence and the increasingly connected and sensor-rich car. The modelling by carmakers and technology providers shows that there would undoubtedly be significant further safety improvements by reduced driver error. But is there a mass belief in this amongst drivers? Well, it depends on where you ask, and what you're asking.
Recently published research from the safety charity Lloyd’s Register Foundation found that on a global basis, only a little over a quarter (27pc) of respondents would feel safe in a fully self-driving car. Education levels were important to the results — more than one third (35pc) of those with post-secondary education would feel safe, compared to only a quarter (25pc) of those with primary education or less. Internet access was also independently associated with feeling safe — across each educational level, the proportion who said they would feel safe was at least nine percentage points higher among those with internet access than among those without. The country that came out with the highest level of acceptance was Denmark at 45pc, followed by the UAE and Afghanistan at 44pc each, and Italy, Spain, Kyrgystan and Sweden in the 40s percentile. There's no figure for Ireland, but we could conceivably be up there too. Bottom line, the future challenge facing car manufacturers is as much about convincing people that driverless vehicles are safe to travel in as about developing the technology itself.
There's a lot of bar-counter negativism about full self-driving cars ever becoming mainstream. But here's a question — how would you have explained the computer to your grandfather when he was your age? Or your smartphone? Or GPS? Or relatively affordable travel to Australia in jet planes that most of the time fly on automatic pilot and are also capable of landing autonomously? The lesson? ... we have no idea of what technologies will develop even in the next decade that will allow for fully self-driving cars to become mainstream. Or even, at the other extreme, make the need for cars unnecessary.
Beam me up, Scotty? (Don't laugh. That dummy 'universal communicator' that Star Trek actors used in the original series is the smartphone in your hand today.)
