Tristan Serkies

Tristan Serkies is the Chief Executive for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Advanced technology in modern vehicles has made everyday travel simpler, but at what cost?

Over the years, automotive manufacturers have been promising the next big thing to arrive on the commercial market in the form of higher grade technology in the everyday vehicle. Of course this may strike most as innovation necessary to a more advanced future, but we are slowly giving away control of our vehicles in the process. Regardless of the benefits, not one addition has come without a bit of safety failure. From bad weather making cameras unusable, to too much faith in the emergency braking systems, the possibility for failure is endless. As a result of the potential accidents caused by these failures, it is becoming impossible for insurance companies to find fault for crashes and other accidents. These points haven’t even touched on the unnecessary add-ons becoming more prevalent, from video screens in the front seat, to colored lights in the interior or even on the exterior. Technology innovations can be “cool” or “impressive”, but we need to take a step back and look at the whole picture. 

As we dive into the history of technology in cars, one very obvious change is within the dashboards and radio displays in the front of the interior. These displays have significantly changed from simple physical dials to fully digital screens. Of course the dashboard is required in all vehicles, but who could possibly focus on the road with videos playing, unnecessary lights flashing, or having to touch the screen to change radio stations rather than a simple twist of a dial. One of the side features is even camera displays on the center console screen, which to be fair has most likely prevented more than one accident, however how many have been caused? Whenever we have a so-called “safety device” installed, not only in cars but anyone in modern society, we give up our sense of human control. We assume the camera can do all the work for us, and most won’t do a second check before switching lanes or backing up, thus causing accidents by throwing human reassurance out the window.

With the ongoing race for the next best thing to put into these vehicles, it becomes increasingly harder for insurance companies to handle at-fault accidents. As self-driving cars become a more common sight in everyday life, the loss of human control becomes more prevalent. When the time comes that two self-driving vehicles collide, or back into one another, who do we put at fault? Would the first driver be at fault, both drivers, or maybe even the manufacturer? Elon Musk stated in an interview this past year that “-by 2021 self-driving vehicles will become common among the commercial marketplace, and more will fill roads and communities.”   The time is approaching where self-driving cars will be the norm, yet we have no idea how we will handle the insurgence of new technology, and that is much scarier than the actual technology itself.

When it comes to safety in vehicles on the road, the computer program is set to never fail, but undoubtedly there’s always that 1% chance. We cannot leave every situation up to a computer’s algorithm rather than human response.  All the add-ons and features that are pre-installed nowadays are nice, however they aren’t required to operate vehicles safely. I suppose the best way to deal with the issue of technology in cars is to find the sweet spot in the middle ground of “need vs. want”.