Tag: auto

Safety Advisory

Yaris After CrashThe best thing that can be said about the photo is that nobody died. The worst thing, for me, is that my parents were in the car pictured. To return to the positive side: they were wearing their seatbelts.

This is a Toyota: a Yaris, to be precise. Other posts tagged with Toyota have focused on the recent recall, mainly on the PR aspects. The Toyota in the photo did not malfunction. It functioned rather well, in that it protected its occupants during an impact with a much larger vehicle.

Reader, please wear your seatbelt, and follow other safety rules, such as: no cellphoning while driving. I posted on another blog about spring and safety, using the same photo. Cross-posting is something I usually avoid, so as to save it for important issues – such as safety.

Social Distractions From Driving

I’ve been driving while distracted quite a lot over the last seven weeks or so. I’ve been distracted from driving itself by finding my way around the Silver Spring area, to which I moved in early December. I’ve often also been distracted by kids in the back of the car: are we nearly there? I’m hungry, etc.

So my actions suggest that I consider a certain amount of distraction while driving to be reasonable. Now that it’s possible to turn cars into wireless wagons, a whole range of social media distractions are becoming available. Mashable Greg provided an interesting account of such distractions.

My guess at an answer is that driving while cellphoning will top the list of dangerous social distractions for the forseeable future. But it is just a guess, and systematic research about the effects of driving of specific social behaviors is needed. Credit goes to Ford for conducting, and publishing the results of, such research.