Product Quality, Driving and Distractions

I mentioned in a previous post having heard a talk by Nancy Gioia, one of our alumni who is a senior manager at Ford, concerning the difficulty of balancing automobile safety with the many digital entertainment and communication devices being demanded by drivers.  In the Sunday edition of the New York Times, there was an article entitled “When Drivers are Overwhelmed, Their Cars May Intervene”.  It is here.  Incidentally, it was directly below an article on VW’s new hybrid and planned electric cars, which contained the amazing and I hope erroneous news that their new eGolf will contain a speaker in the dash that emits an artificial engine sound that gets louder as the car accelerates at low speed, cutting off at 20 mph when the road noise takes over.  Are we that set in our ways?

 The article in the above link predicts that as more driver distractions are added to cars, more features will necessarily be added to the cars to help the driver.  This sounds like a bonanza for the economy, mechanics, manufacturers, and other people who feed on increasing the complexity of cars.  But unfortunately, complexity begets failures, and if one is dependent on features that are essential to avoid accidents, we should worry.

 Driver distractions do cause accidents, which result in deaths, but do we really trust technology to protect us against them?  Traffic accidents in the U.S. cause about 30,000 deaths per year.  In the last ten years there have been only 150 fatalities resulting from commercial airplane accidents.  Interesting that some of us worry more about flying than driving.

 In commercial airlines, the pilot and other crew members are isolated from the passengers and other distractions.  There is more complexity to flying an airplane than driving a car, but the pilots are highly trained and have a great deal of experience, and great care is taken in designing airplane cockpits to simplify the task of the pilot, neither especially true of automobiles and their cars.

 It seems that if we are truly seeking safety, we should train drivers better, and isolate them from distractions, such as passengers in the car, cell phone conversations, TV screens, computer games, and other such fun activities.  Physically easy to do.  But of course doing so is not consistent with being re-elected to political office, nor with traditional automotive travel habits.  We feel so secure driving a car that we seem to not be overly concerned with this death toll, unless it happens to us or someone we are close to.  But what if distractions continue to increase?

 Will such things as biometrics (measuring the state of the driver, warning them if they are overloaded, and intercepting incoming distractions if they are) help?  Or will people invent ways to circumvent the system, as people now do with cell phones and various noxious warning sounds and subtle symbols on the dash board, or ignore the law, such as they do with cell phones and texting.  And how about reliability of these systems?  My computers often need re-booting, and occasionally fail without warning.  Can electronic systems be made fail-safe in an automobile?  I must admit I am impressed that accidental inflation of air bags is so rare, but relatively simple and well-known devices such as solenoids and ignition coils do fail, and rodents do seem to like dining on cable harnesses.  At present, the result of such things is automatic doors that won’t open, and engines that won’t run well, not death.