Take a look at the news, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the world was in pretty poor shape. However, the negative news doesn’t tell the whole picture. While there are certainly problems in the world, humanity is doing a lot better in many areas of society than most people give it credit for. One such example of this is on the roads, where accidents are happening at a lower rate across the world than ever before. This didn’t just magically happen. It’s the result of hard work from people in different sectors of the automotive industry. Here’s how it happened.
New Technology
If you took a car from 1992 and compared it with a car from 2022, you’d be astounded at how different they are. Of course, most people pay attention to things like the infotainment part of the vehicle, which has noticeably improved in the past ten years. However, the most important advancements have been in the safety technology of the vehicle. There’s a whole host of advanced software and technology that adds an extra level of safety beyond the driver’s reaction times, which was essentially all that was used to prevent accidents in the past.
More Advanced Testing
Of course, a car can’t last forever. At some point, it’ll face issues that need repairing. If a part isn’t maintained before it begins to falter, then that car will be more likely to be in an accident. While car parts do break down from time to time, in general, car parts are extremely robust. And thanks to things like hil testing, manufacturers have a good idea of when a specific function within a vehicle will falter. By the time a car arrives at a showroom, it has already been through a rigorous testing process that ensures it’s safe for the roads.
Greater Controls
There are also many new controls in place that help to make the roads safer. For instance, it wasn’t all that long ago that it was possible to drive while on a cell phone. And you don’t need to go too far in the past to find a point when it was legal to drink and drive. Now, we know that those things make an accident much more likely, and they’ve been highly regulated. Those regulations severely reduced those types of dangerous driving, which in turn made the roads safer.
Improved Driver Education
Finally, there’s the matter of driver education, which has increased in quality in recent years. The more drivers know about staying safe on the road, the safer they’ll be. In many states, it’s not possible to get your driver’s license until you’ve been through several rounds of courses and testing. That helps to ensure that, by the time the driver does finally get on the road, they’re well versed in all the things that could cause an accident. It’s frustrating for the would-be driver to have to wait to drive, but we’re all the better for it, and so is the driver.
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