Crashing the Party

It’s pretty simple really. Cars have gotten a lot safer over the years, so driving-related deaths have consistently gone down. That’s if things made sense. But get out of my dreams and get into my car and you’ll realize that life is a highway and, often, it’s a highway to hell. Everyday is a winding road. That’s true for driving and it’s true for life. And it turns out what’s going on in our lives can have as big an impact on driver safety as the safety of our cars. Are we being driven to distraction or driven to the edge? Strap yourself in for this NYT Mag (Gift Article) from Matthew Shaer, who provides a crash course on a subject that could drive a person mad. Why Are American Drivers So Deadly? “Multiple airbags were standard on nearly every new vehicle, regardless of price, and backup cameras and lane-departure and blind-spot sensors were cheaper to produce. The improved technology meant that drivers not only had more peripheral awareness; they were more likely to survive crashes that might have killed the occupant of an older vehicle. ‘It all made sense to me — all the things that were supposed to be working were working … But then things stopped making sense. Everything changed, radically, like someone had flipped a switch.'” (Maybe self-driving can’t come fast enough it we want cars to slow down…)