From the article Rick Monteverde linked to:
"MyRate is designed for safe drivers," comments Richard Hutchinson,
Progressive's MyRate general manager. "It's for people who drive
fewer miles than average, at low-risk times of day and keep alert for
others on the road. They don't make fast lane changes or follow too
closely behind other drivers so they don't have to over-react or slam
on the brakes."
Drivers who choose to sign up for MyRate receive a device that plugs
into a port in their car and measures how, how much and when the car
is being driven. . . .
That's invasive, but I like it! I'd go for it, if it were available
in Atlanta, and if it works with a 16-year-old Geo Metro.
I'd like to see something like that tied to vehicle tax fees for pay
as you drive efficiency. Eventually this could evolve into an
aviation-style control system like a TCA for heavily used corridors
during peak use for a more fair distribution of taxes and fees, an
incentive to reduce congestion, reduce accidents, and perhaps the
ability to fine tune traffic flow on the fly.
Good ideas, all.
In Japan they are pushing vigorously for more automated driving, with
things like radar and accident warning systems, and intelligent
computers that warn when pedestrians or other cars may be crossing
ahead. This is often featured on the nightly news. I do not think
they have any near-term plans for fully automated highways, but R&D
in that direction is proceeding in both the U.S. and Japan. On one
hand, it looks to me as if these gadgets they intend to install soon
will cost a fortune. On the other hand, they had 736,160 accidents
and 908,874 people injured in Japan -- as noted in the second article
I cited. That must have cost billions of dollars. Reducing that by
even a modest percent would save a lot of money and anguish. It is
like the cost of emergency R&D for the H1N1 vaccine. Imagine how many
millions of hours of misery and lost work-hours that prevented!
The dollar cost of automobile accidents in the U.S. is roughly $230
billion in hospital bills alone. The cost in human lives is ~40,000
per year, or roughly as much as much as the Korean war, repeated
every year, for the last 50 years. Throwing $100 billion per year at
the problem to reduce this toll would be well worth it.
U.S. automobile fatality rates (fatalities per passenger mile) have
declined, but I do not think they have fallen as much as in Japan.
Per 100 million vehicle miles, rates fell from 1.73 to 1.28 between
1994 and 2008 (14 years). See:
<http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx>http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
The absolute number of people killed per year has fallen from a peak
at around 50,000 in 1979 to 40,000 today. Compared to population and
total driving this is a 36% decline. That is impressive, but not as
impressive as the 70% decline in Japan since their peak in 1970.
Their population has not increased significantly since 1980, so this
70% decline is also per capita and probably pretty close to the
decline per passenger mile.
To some extent, with modern automobiles, we trade off death in
accidents for both injuries and for the destruction of the vehicle.
That is to say, we have fewer deaths but more people are gravely
injured, with multiple fractures of the legs and so on. Air bags save
their lives but they end up in the hospital for long periods. Also,
automobiles absorb the energy from the collision and are destroyed
more often, I think. I believe I read that more automobile insurance
is now paid to cover hospital bills than vehicle repairs. These are
trade offs anyone would be pleased to make!
Human life in general is given a much higher premium in modern times
than it was 50 or 150 years ago. In 1861, the Pony Express supposedly
advertised for riders as follows: "Young, skinny, wiry fellows, not
over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans
preferred." This probably a myth, but the fact that people believed
it tells you a lot about the times.
Of course employment opportunities in 1861 were mainly in the U.S.
Army, and did feature risking death often, if not daily. The national
attitude toward casualties, and willingness to sustain them, changed
completely from the Civil War to WWI, WWII and to present-day wars.
Willingness to inflict casualties on the enemy has also declined
since 1945. Even in WWII enemy casualties were a laughing matter
(literally), at least among civilians, but not today.
- Jed
