The Blame Game

By Submitted Article

When you heard the shocking news that five people died on Hwy 16 at Cluculz Lake, did you blame someone?  Did you nod in agreement when authorities implied that the vehicle was driving at speeds inappropriate for road conditions?  Did that solve the problem?  I think not.

Dr. Claes Tingvall, Director of Traffic Safety for the Swedish National Road Administration talks about blaming the driver for problems caused by factors beyond their control:  “The road transport system and its stakeholders have been given the task of providing the citizen with mobility but have at the same time unintentionally generated one of the largest health catastrophes ever seen in the history of mankind.  In a moral and legal sense, there has always been a citizen to blame.”

To err is human, especially for drivers confronted with a confusing constellation of challenges: a busy highway, a carload of passengers, a deadline, a blizzard, and marginal traction.  Blaming the driver gets us nowhere.  Nor is it useful to blame the weather.  We live in British Columbia.  It’s winter. 

Rather than blaming problems beyond our control, why not focus on a cheap and easy solution.  We can improve control of our vehicles through a simple technology called Electronic Stability Control (“ESC”).  ESC detects and prevents skidding by applying one brake to one wheel and/or reducing engine power.

ESC works fast; much faster than I can.  ESC reacts in 1/25th of a second, and often corrects skids before I realize I have lost control.  To do what ESC does, I would need four feet, four brake pedals, and superhuman reactions.

ESC is profoundly effective.  Experts around the world say ESC is the most important safety innovation since the seatbelt.  The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety says that ESC reduces fatal crashes by 43 percent, fatal single-vehicle crashes by 56 percent, and fatal single-vehicle rollovers by as much as 80 percent.

Seatbelts, airbags, head restraints, bumpers, roll cages, and other passive safety devices have one unfortunate thing in common.  They don’t work until the crash.  ESC is an active safety device that intervenes before the crash.  And ESC is most effective in reducing serious loss-of-control crashes; the ones that main or kill. 

The best kind of crash is one that never happens.  However, if a crash becomes inevitable, ESC makes crashing safer by keeping the vehicle pointing where the driver is steering.  Rollovers cause almost one-third of fatalities.  ESC keeps the vehicle travelling forward, making it much less likely to trip sideways and roll over.  And it is safer to hit a solid object frontally than sideways because cars have more frontal than lateral crash protection devices.

ESC protects occupants of the vehicle.  ESC also protects other road users (without ESC) because the ESC vehicle is less likely to lose control and hit them. 

Dr. Tingvall once said, “Cars without ESC ... should be phased out as soon as cars with ESC are available.”  ESC was first installed in production vehicles in 1995 and is now available from all auto makers.  And ESC is cheap.  It costs manufacturers only $111 to add ESC to a vehicle.  As a new-car option, ESC retails for as little as $450. 

Unfortunately, some manufacturers have restricted ESC to expensive models, forcing buyers to buy luxury features they don’t need in order to get a safe vehicle.  ESC costs less than seat belts.  It would be unthinkable if seat belts were only available in expensive cars.  Why is ESC not in every new vehicle?

Glen Nicholson is an independent safety advocate , this is the first of several articles about ESC.  For more information, look up “Electronic Stability Control” on Wikipedia at this link: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Stability_Control

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