The Effects Of In-Car Technology On Driving Habits

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The Effects of In-car Technology on Driving Habits As cars have evolved throughout history, each coming era brings along new technology to be added to cars. These altered types of technology have affected drivers in many different ways; some types have benefitted drivers by making driving safer by limiting human blunders; however, other types have harmed drivers by causing enough distraction to lose their focus on the road and creating accidents or near accidents.
One major reason this topic is important is because of how frequent accidents occur. In the United States alone, 37,000 people die in road crashes each year and, even further than that, 2.35 million people become injured or disabled (ASIRT, 2016). Because of this major death toll, …show more content…

For instance, the Tesla cars have 17 inch touch screens in the center of the center consul (teslamotors.com, 2016). How can drivers completely focus on driving without getting distracted by the extravagant touchscreen that is four to five inches larger than the average tablet? Cell phones are thought to be the biggest distractor of drivers currently, but in actuality cell phones are not the only type of technology that can distract drivers and cause crashes. Other forms of technology that are distractors to drivers include touchscreens, radios, and the various controls included in each vehicle. If there is a way to limit the amount of this distracting technology, people could benefit greatly by lessening the chance of distraction and possible future accidents. As more technology is being developed, there is the speculation that certain technologies will have more advantages than disadvantages. For example, the new technology that is being added to some cars like adaptive cruise control, ACC, is just one step away from driverless cars. When traveling on the highway, cars with ACC are able to stay within the lines on the pavement and keep a constant speed all while monitoring what the surrounding cars are doing, whether that be getting too close or slowing …show more content…

Some of these technologies alter the idea of autonomous driving so much so that inventors will need to make major changes to driverless cars in order to maintain safety (Richtel & Dougherty,2015; Poeter, 2015).
Another factor to acknowledge within this topic is the driver. Every person has different driving abilities and concentration abilities, and because of this, every person will react differently with the technology. Klauer, Guo, Simons-Morton, Ouimet, Lee, and Dingus, authors on car safety and age differences, acknowledged this to some extent as they looked into distracted driving and road crash risks and the differences between novice and experienced drivers (2016).

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