This morning my youngest said his goodbyes to his Mum and sisters and stepped out of the door to go to school with me. “Are we walking or driving?” he asked.
“We’re walking” I replied. “Mum is taking the girls to school and college so we can walk”. His response was not positive.
Anyway, he has recently got into riding a bike. He has been a late developer in this area but suddenly got interested when he saw the fun that could be had with one and that the grandson of a neighbour (about 4yrs old) could ride and he couldn’t. He was pretty much shamed into it but has picked it up very quickly. He has had a small loaner bike for a while to learn but he is now riding much better and Grandma has bought him a shiny new one for his birthday. He loves it. As we took the first steps down the front lawn I stopped and suggested he may like to go on his bike instead. He leapt at the idea.
A few moments later the bike was out of the garage and the helmet was on. He was set to go. We live in a very small village but as with every other town and city it gets busy with traffic during the school runs. He cycled out of our lane and up the hill to the main road in the village. He waited for me and he then cycled slowly along the road toward school with me walking closely behind him. Traffic behind him held back and waited patiently. Then when safe it passed. There were pedestrians on the footpath and crossing the road ahead of him. As we approached the village shop there were more cars, some turning in front of him and others coming the other way. Parking, reversing and much manoeuvring. The road was quite congested with this traffic and parked cars and a large delivery truck was making matters more complex.
He took it all in his stride and filtered off to head in the direction of the school. More traffic and more pedestrians. There were also lots of cars parked along one side of the road. This constricts the road and means traffic can only flow one way at a time. Children are being pulled from car seats by harassed parents and in many cases this is done into the road… not onto the footpath. Other children are running and playing along the footpath and some are stepping out between parked cars with the intention to cross.
Cars are jockeying for parking spaces and other parents are trying to pull out and head for home, work or the pilates class! Owners of the houses close to the school are pulling off their drives wishing they had set off to work 30 minutes earlier.
Further ahead an additional obstruction is caused by the school minibuses and taxi’s that bring children from the outlying villages. This creates a chicane type situation with the parked vehicles. Some parents who are impatient or just plain selfish pull up in the middle of the road and simply deposit their children by the gate before driving off causing an additional obstruction and delays to everyone else.
The scene is one of intense activity and for drivers and other road users there are potential hazards in every direction. This is a very small village. If you take this scenario and put it in a city the issues and hazards will increase.
Having started with my boy on his bike I’m now going to leave him and focus on drivers. He was essentially another hazard to the drivers. This is an important word when it comes to driving. Hazard.
Hazard recognition, hazard perception, hazard avoidance.
Picture this scene or draw on your own memories and experiences of similar situations. Busy roads bursting with traffic, pedestrians and risk. The driver of every vehicle has to have their wits about them. A collision is only ever moments away. Just a momentary lapse in concentration can lead to an event that will stay with you for the rest of your life. The unpredictable event where a child dashes across the road to their friend and thinks not about the oncoming car. If your concentration is not where it should be at that crucial moment…..
Distracted driving kills. We know this for a fact. We know that many people have been seriously injured or killed on our roads by drivers who are focussed on their phones and not on their driving. Christopher Gard, Tomasz Kroker, Peter Morrison, Dorel Galan, David Wagstaff and many more. I would argue that ALL these drivers knew the risks. ALL these drivers knew the dangers. Yet ALL these drivers took that risk anyway.
As a week long campaign tackling mobile phone use by drivers runs across the UK it is a good time to look at this behaviour. You cannot imagine the hazard rich environment detailed above and then think that a driver is not distracted if they are messing with their phone. Hand held or hands free. They are distracted and tragedy is heartbeat away.
But we have further problems. Car manufacturers are increasingly building cars with more tech and clever infotainment systems that hook up to the drivers phone and offer even more options and distractions. The only place for a phone whilst driving is in the phone compartment (formerly known as the glove box). Yet manufacturers build and sell us cars that have a massive amount of phone connectivity and promote it as being safe because it’s ‘hands free’. This is simply not the case and hands free calls and sending texts have already been proven to increase reaction times more than a driver at the drink drive limit.
Project EDWARD ran this week. A European wide campaign to reduce road deaths across Europe to zero. Whilst many road safety organisations and police forces/agencies are trying to reduce deaths on our roads manufacturers are actually increasing the likelihood of them.
Then… along comes something new. The internet of things has been a topic of discussion for a while.. you can now get internet enabled TV, fridges and washing machines that can be controlled from an app on your phone from the other side of the world. You can turn on your lights, switch on the heating and draw the curtains at home whilst you are still 30 miles away. Many people have also been drawn into the world of Alexa. Amazon’s voice activated virtual assistant. It sits in your home and you tell it what you want and it can do it for you. Very clever stuff… not infallible … but clever. Alexa.. turn the lights down, Alexa, do I need more milk, Alexa is the washing machine still running and so on. I’ve not really got into this area of technology at all but it has become very popular and is now set to invade another area of our lives and the consequences could be huge.
Introducing Alexa for your car. Echo Auto.
I have to ask one question. Why?
The article points out that manufacturers are already getting excited about this development including Toyota, Ford, Lexus, BMW and Audi. Of course it will give satnav type traffic info and will play music…. but you can also tell it do all those things that you can do with your home device. As the article says.. add things to your shopping list and integrate with your smart home devices.
Amazon cannot escape from the fact that this is designed for drivers. A passenger can use the apps on the phone to do such stuff if necessary. We cannot get drivers to put their phones down. Why on earth would we add another unnecessary piece of tech into our our cars. Amazon are introducing a new piece of kit that doesn’t make driving safer… it just gives drivers even more things to contend with and do whilst driving.. instead of perhaps what they should be doing. Concentrating on their driving.
Imagine the headlines… child killed outside school by driver who was ordering milk via Alexa. Serious head on collsion whilst driver tells Alexa to turn the heating off at home. None of this stuff is relevant to driving and can only bring further tragedy to families across the world.
Amazon will of course add their disclaimers and state it shouldn’t be used whilst driving…. but knowing full well that’s what people will do. In the meantime they will make money on the back of other peoples stupidity and people will die as a consequence.
The article adds further icing to the distracted driving cake by then saying it will cost you $50… but if you are an early adopter you can get it for $25 this year. So you can have a 50% discount and be a tester for Amazon and potentially kill or seriously injure someone in the process.
We cannot and will not make positive steps in the right direction in reducing deaths and serious injuries on our roads whilst car manufacturers and the likes of Amazon continue to put profit before human lives.