Driving, The Third Option

Several years ago I was listening to a feature on NPR talking about how people could not trust the fuel efficiency numbers published by the EPA. There were all kinds of moaning and complaining about how the sticker did not match real world experience.

At the time I had kept complete records over an eight-year period and found that my mileage was at least as good as the EPA rating, even though I did far less highway driving than the 45% standard. I ended up giving a brief interview on a later program.

That was a long time ago, and since then the EPA has adjusted their ratings in response to public pressure. But the distress continues.

This Edmunds post asks: “So why doesn't your fuel economy match the EPA rating?” It explains that since those changes, applied to the 2008 model year, “ratings aren't really all that far off the real-world mpg that consumers get….While there are lots of people who cannot under any circumstances get their vehicles to come close to the official ratings, there are also lots who regularly meet or exceed them.” The only exceptions were some poorly run tests by Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai-Kia that resulted in government-ordered adjustments to the ratings and fines to the companies. (The companies rather than the EPA do their own tests and submit the results.)

So if it was possible to match the standards before 2008, and since then there are “lots of people who regularly meet or exceed them," why is it still an issue? Other factors like weather, terrain and congestion do come into play, but Edmunds explains, “calm drivers, those motorists who don't accelerate constantly and who avoid unnecessary lane changes, get 35 percent better fuel economy than other drivers.”

My idea of the third option expands on that definition of calm drivers. I can tell just by watching brake lights of cars ahead of me and the drivers who pass me on the way to a red light that many drivers seem to think they have only two choices with their right foot: keep it on the accelerator or press on the brake. As a result they try to drive the speed limit as close to the intersection as possible before braking to a stop.

The third option is to simply lift your foot when approaching a red light or approaching a vehicle that is already braking. This allows your car to slow down gently (and likely causes the person following too close behind you to apply the brake.) It only requires someone to look ahead while driving to anticipate problems. That person following too close does not have the time to anticipate and is forced to react immediately to any speed variation of the car in front. This is easy to observe on any road or highway in the country as the brake lights flash on and off.

The physics is simple. It takes fuel to accelerate and maintain speed. Each time the brake is applied it undoes some of that work. In effect some gasoline has been used to produce heat cause by friction at the brakes instead of producing motion. It’s pure waste. Critical thinkers hate waste.

Lack of Perspective and Critical Thinking

The news sure keeps us on our toes. There are always examples of perspective issues. Likewise, some information is just passed along by the talking heads without applying any critical thinking. Here are a few examples.

In England, “Kleenex will re-brand its ‘Mansize’ tissues after consumers complained the name was sexist – touching off a social media conversation about what's in a name.” True, this is a story from London and not directly related to a Real American Solution, but it’s not a stretch to imagine the same kind of thing happening on this side of the ocean. These tissues have been going by the same name for over 60 years, and suddenly someone is offended and contacts the company. The company folds under the pressure even though about 99.9% of their customers probably don’t care.

This is a typical case of one or two people having too much time on their hands and not even appreciating the fact that being offended by a tissue box is a much smaller problem than most of their neighbors are facing. Clearly, in this case, perspective has taken a long holiday.

Meanwhile back in the US, “Pet owners will spend nearly half a billion dollars on animal costumes this Halloween,” according to Marketwatch.com. Just admit it, pet costumes for Halloween have got to be in the luxury category, clearly a want and not a need. But it doesn’t end there! “The National Retail Federation says Americans will spend $9 billion celebrating Halloween this year.” 

Things must be pretty sweet, if we can afford to drop $9 billion on one day of celebrating what was originally a pagan holiday. Despite an average credit card debt per household of $5,700, Americans can’t seem to help themselves.

But the situation is similar to the offensive tissues. When this kind of spending tops the to-do list, perhaps it’s time to appreciate how good we have it instead of fighting over trivia on social media and agonizing over petty annoyances. That's what lack of perspective looks like - taking all we have for granted while focusing on the trivia.

Finally, there was this story to challenge critical thinking from AAA. The opening paragraph reads like this: 

"As National Teen Driver Safety Week kicks off (October 21-27), the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has released new research which found that when a teen driver has only teen passengers in their vehicle, the fatality rate for all people involved in a crash increased 51 percent. In contrast, when older passengers (35 or older) ride with a teen driver, overall fatality rates in crashes decreased eight percent. Considering the increased risk created by a combination of teen drivers and teen passengers, AAA emphasizes the need for teen drivers to gain adequate supervised training, especially in different driving scenarios, before taking what could be a fatal drive."

All of the reporters read it pretty much word for word.

Does this report actually present any evidence that teens riding with teens are more dangerous? I would tend to believe it is true, but this tells us nothing about it! They didn’t look at the different scenarios: teens with teens, with young adults and with people older than 35, for all miles driven or all trips. They only looked at the crashes to see how many people were killed.

That only means that when a crash happens it’s more dangerous, but it doesn’t mention the frequency of the crashes and is mute on the instances of teens driving alone. Their conclusions and recommendations assume that frequency is higher, but the analysis does not show it. Nice try, AAA. 

Why does no one else raise this question? Could it be because it fits their model of the world – that teens really are more dangerous? That probably is the case, but the news media aren’t paid to think or question, just to pass along information, accurate or not.

Risk Adaptation

Several years ago I mentioned partially in jest to my sister, at the time an elementary school teacher, that the stock market was doomed.  With all the safety features being implemented on playgrounds and other facilities for children, by the time they reached adulthood they would be too risk averse to want to invest in anything other than guaranteed accounts.  Farewell, stock market and entrepreneurship.

She immediately set me straight.  With padded playgrounds, instead of hanging upside down by their knees from the monkey bars, they were now hanging by one leg.  Reduce the risk; increase the risk taking.

That same idea came up again when I began to see the relationship between automobile safety features and careless driving.  And this is not new.

An article from 2006 tells of Researchers at Purdue, led by a civil engineering professor, that “determined that airbags and antilock braking systems do not reduce the likelihood of accidents or injuries because they may encourage more aggressive driving.”  The feeling back then was that drivers adapt to the new technology giving up some responsibility for safety “by becoming less vigilant.”

By 2012 technology and safety features and enhancements other than air bags and anti-lock braking systems became more common as they migrated to more cars from the luxury brands.  Some of these were vehicle crumple zones, stricter seat belt enforcement, side-impact protection, traction control, and better conceived speed limits.  According to another source, these were “all designed to save lives and make driving a less risky activity. However, despite all these safety measures, road accidents and fatalities have remained constant over the last few decades.”

Traditionally, safety innovations begin at the luxury level and work their way down, but today some of the autonomous vehicle research also contributes to the new technology.  Today we are beginning to see more backup cameras, collision mitigation systems, lane departure warning systems, blind-spot monitors, and drowsiness detection monitors.  Guess what!  A July article from Carfax cites their in-house study finding “that some drivers, especially younger drivers, may come to over rely on car technology safety features rather than basic safe driving habits.”

And just a few weeks later in an article principally about self-driving cars the Seattle Times confirms, “Driver-assist technology that keeps cars in their lanes, maintains a safe distance from other vehicles, warns of unseen traffic and slams the brakes to avoid rear-end crashes are rapidly spreading from luxury cars…But these automated aids aimed at improving safety are having an unintended consequence: They’re degrading driving skills.”  Drivers become lax through over-reliance on newer and newer technology.  Through interviews they confirmed that most drivers agreed that people tend to quickly become so comfortable with the technology that they would pay more attention to it than relying on their own driving skills; for example, listening for the warning chime instead of looking over their shoulder to check the blind spot.  But, of course as in most interviews, it’s always the other guy.

Driving is dangerous.  Better cars and better roads can’t totally change that.  This adaptation behind the wheel is as irresponsible as the grade-schoolers hanging upside-down by one leg, except if they slip they only hurt themselves, not their passengers or others on the road.

It’s also interesting to suppose where else this tendency to over-rely on technology may be leading, places where it's not so obvious because the consequences are subtler, hidden or delayed.

One Crisis After Another

Nothing could make the point better, about behavior having consequences, than the short parade of crises in the news this last week.  According to the CDC, the US has a sleep crisis.  Meanwhile a health advocacy group blames Coke for the continued obesity problems in America.  We text while we drive because we are addicted to technology.

The watchdog group, Center for Science in the Public Interest, is circulating their own version of the famous Coca Cola commercial from 1970, the “Hill Top Ad,” to raise awareness about the dangers of drinking sugary soft drinks.  The parody is necessary, they say, to counter the promotion efforts by Coke, Pepsi and others.  "The industry is spending billions of dollars to encourage people to drink more, and the health side of the equation needs to get the message out to drink less.”

So here is one more group who believes that Americans are so gullible or stupid or impressionable that billions in advertising can talk them into doing something that, if they were just a little better informed, they would not.  Is that even credible?  Are commercial ads really so powerful that we are helpless to resist?  Get a grip!  The industry’s response was that they “put clear calorie information on all of our cans, bottles and packs” to allow consumers to make the choices that are best for them.

Obesity does continue to be a problem in America, and The LA Times reports a new study finding a constant increase.  “Two-thirds of U.S. women and three-quarters of U.S. men are overweight or obese.”  This is not good, but can we blame that on beverage advertising?  This is a discipline issue compounded by a responsibility issue as another advocate enhances their own income and job security by trying to protect victims by shifting the blame. 

Just two days earlier came the reports of a “sleep crisis.”  The CDC is working on new sleep guidelines as research shows that adults get less sleep than recommended, a minimum of at least 7 hours each night. “Anything from 6 hours and below can raise your risk for a heart attack, stroke, diabetes and obesity.”

On the same subject Reader’s Digest announced in March:  “Sleep deprivation now rivals obesity and smoking as our greatest public health crisis.”  They say lack of sleep is making us “fat, sick and stupid.”  Later in the article the blame is placed on technology and the responsibility to solve it has fallen on employers as they try to combat workplace fatigue by offering “sleep-hygiene courses, taught by an increasing legion of sleep experts who come at the problem from various disciplines: medicine, psychology, business. Recognizing that getting their employees to sleep more at home will help them perform better at work, top corporations are bringing these experts in to preach the gospel of sleep to their employees.”

Once upon a time employees were expected not to fall asleep at work.  Once there was a simple concept called bedtime – when we were children, parents enforced it; by the time we became adults, we had developed the habit.  Today it’s technology’s fault and the employer’s problem to fix.  The only surprise was that they didn’t try to also blame it on the caffeine in the cola.

A few days later CBS informed us that use of smart phones behind the wheel is on the increase and “distracted driving caused 3,100 deaths in 2013.”  Their expert explained how this is an addiction, like gambling.  Technology is being developed in Australia to track drivers’ eye movements and sound an alarm, at the same time as states propose new laws.  You see, we have shown we cannot control or be responsible for our own behavior.

So the lack of sleep is making Americans fat, sick and stupid; the soft drinks are making Americans fat and sick; and it takes a watchdog group and employers to solve that problem because we are apparently incapable of saying no to the cola, no to the smartphone and yes to a reasonable bedtime.  We cannot resist using the phone while driving, a practice that began only a few years ago.  Am I the only one that finds this trend really, really scary?