It’s Not You; It’s Your Dashboard
Imagine getting into the vehicle, hitting the highway, reaching 70mph and then closing your eyes. You don’t have to keep them long shut, just 5 or 6 seconds. If someone suggested that you do that, you’d call them crazy. Why would anyone, other than an impulsive or reckless new driver, even attempt that? At highway speeds, you’re going over 100 feet per second; taking your eyes off the road for 5 or 6 seconds means you go the distance of two football fields.
For years the warnings have been out there: don’t text behind the wheel! And the message has (sort of) worked; people are getting better at putting the phone down. We’re not looking at our smart phones quite as much, but the distractions haven’t gone away. In the last few years, manufacturers have been replacing knobs and buttons with giant touchscreens that pull eyes off the road for simple tasks like turning on the air conditioner, adjusting the radio, or defrosting the back window.
The Car Crash Captain looks at how we’re just as distracted as ever, but now vehicles are designed to require distractions.
Distracted Driving Has a New Look
Remember way back to the 1900s when campaigns were focused around drunk driving? Some cities even touted lines like “Four out of Five of Us” meaning four out of five drivers don’t drive drunk (not that reassuring to think that if you’re out on a Friday night and pass twenty cars, you’re passing 4 drunk drivers…). The shift, though, in the early 2000s focused on public safety in regards to phones and texting. Then it was phone usage in general as social media surged onto the scene.
Now, more and more cars are quietly replacing the controls we always knew and loved. Climate control knobs and levers became digital buttons. Radio knobs were replaced with digital displays. Seat controls, navigation, and just about everything else that was on your phone, got slapped up onto an oversized touchscreen built into the dashboard. Now you can drive hands free because your dashboard is the new phone.
And you have to look away from the road just to do simple driving tasks that used to take a flick of the finger. Imagine, we tell people not to hold their phone while driving, then we bolted a 15-inch computer to the dashboard and forced them to use it.
Convenience at a Cost
Technological improvements are great, especially in vehicle safety. The old adage of, “They just don’t build them like they used to!” is a moot point because if you’re in a wreck, the vehicle is designed to protect you against bodily harm.
But now, we’ve gone too far. You can easily develop muscle memory to slide a lever or turn a knob; you keep your eyes on the road and your hand mindlessly reaches out to turn up the volume or crank up the heat. But on a screen, you have to pull your eyes away from the road just to see if you’re poking at the right place.
You have to aim a finger, read text, confirm a selection. And if this is at night, that bright LED screen kills your night vision.
Some vehicles are worse than others. Some put all of the stuff on the screen, others put most of it. But likely, you’ve experienced it. When was the last time you used a touchscreen while driving? If your vehicle was built within the last 10-15 years, it was probably yesterday or today.
Manufacturers say these systems are cleaner, smarter, and more modern. Safety researchers say they’re more dangerous and lead to more distracted driving than ever before.
Do Investigators Look at the Technology?
And that leads to a bigger problem. After a wreck, investigators and adjusters are still looking at things through a 10-year-old lens.
- Was the driver speeding?
- Were they impaired?
- Using their phone?
- Driving recklessly?
They get statements, review footage, and sometimes the results can be: nope, all was just fine!
But they fail to ask the newest question: what was happening on the dashboard? The driver could have been entering a destination in their GPS. Perhaps they were trying to turn down the heat or the air conditioner. Maybe an alert popped up, and a few seconds glance meant not seeing the road ahead of them. Or they were flipping through the endless touchscreen menus that bury pertinent information.
The insurance company wants to paint distraction as a personal failure. Now it’s time to start asking if the design of the vehicle played a role as well.
Herbert Law Group Knows What to Investigate for Distracted Driving
Technology is rapidly changing and adjusting the way we drive. Wrecks are less fatal than they used to be, but there are far more vehicles on the road.
Black boxes, or EDRs, can give a lot of information about what happened before, during, and after the wreck. But currently there are much fewer “screen recordings” inside of modern cars. Depending on the make and model, some will record what happened on the screen, others will merely record that something happened, and some won’t record anything. And that’s why you need a Texas car wreck lawyer to help you navigate this difficult and new world of technology.
Herbert Law Group serves the Dallas, Texas area and we have helped countless victims prove that they suffered due to someone else’s negligence, faulty equipment, and now it’s becoming more and more likely that it’s a design flaw that will lead to innocent people being hurt.
If you’ve been injured, or a loved one was killed, in a Texas car wreck, we need to talk. You deserve justice and compensation; we know how to make it happen. Call our offices at 214-414-3808 and let’s chat about what happened to determine how we can help. Or, simply fill out the contact form on our site and we’ll reach out to you.