It’s probably never been easier to drive.
In newer cars, the dashboard shows you when the temperature is cold enough that the pavement might be icy — you might even get a considerate little “ding” sound when the air cools that extra little bit.
Traction control warnings let you know when your car’s back end is slipping — just in case you’ve never ridden a bicycle or felt the back end of a car swing on loose gravel on a dirt road — so that you can slow down and regain control.
Backup cameras help you parallel park — heck, in some cars, cameras and the on-board computer will take over the whole process for you, tidily tucking you into a parking space if you’re not confident enough to do it yourself. (Backup cameras will also occasionally give you too much confidence — they have a limited field of view and can sometimes mislead you into a parking meter or light pole.) Cruise control will keep a nice regular pace for you on long drives, without your foot or calf even getting tired.
As I passed, I glanced over at the other driver. He was looking down at the steering wheel, reading the second page of a letter.
Some cars automatically brake to avoid accidents or warn you with a signal that someone’s in your blind spot. Power steering and power brakes are a constant. And all of that’s before the radical improvements in vehicle safety that, while they might mean your car gets totalled in an accident remarkably quickly, also makes accidents that would have killed you 15 years ago into crashes that you simply walk away from.
All in all, it’s remarkable success story.
There’s less for you to do, less you have to pay attention to and less to exhaust you in the process. And a less tired driver is a better driver, right? Success!
Well, to a point.
We haven’t lived up to that benefit. In fact, I think it’s actually damaged our ability to drive safely — because we can be remarkably sloppy drivers and have technology automatically there to protect us from our mistakes.
I say this after driving on the Trans-Canada Highway this weekend and coming upon a car that didn’t seem to be able to maintain speed. It would speed, up, slow down, speed up again. The kind of thing that makes you wonder about what’s going on inside the car, and whether you should just pass it and put the potential problem behind you.
So I did.
As I passed, I glanced over at the other driver. He was looking down at the steering wheel, reading the second page of a letter.
How did I know it was the second page?
Because the two pages were stapled together, and the first page was hanging turned back over the wheel like a dog’s floppy ear. And at no point was he even aware I was looking at him. I’ve rarely been happier to be safely past a car.
We’ve all seen drivers who check their text messages at traffic lights. I mean, everyone thinks they’re completely artful about it, that no one notices, that there’s nothing wrong. But you can tell from the concentrating tilt of their heads towards their laps, and by the way traffic pulls away in front of them when the light changes, leaving four or five car lengths before the texting driver surfaces from their electronic reverie.
We’ve all seen lone drivers in cars involved in such animated conversations that there’s no way on Earth they know there’s someone on the crosswalk, just as we’ve all seen texting drivers, brought into action by a horn behind them, lurch without looking into a right-hand turn on pavement already occupied by a pedestrian.
We have smart, smart cars now. But they’re letting drivers act dumb.
Russell Wangersky’s column appears in SaltWire newspapers and websites across Atlantic Canada. He can be reached at [email protected] — Twitter: @wangersky.
