Episode 82. A Two-Edged Sword: In-vehicle technologies can either help us or hurt us.

Bernie Fette (00:14):
Hey everyone. Welcome to Thinking Transportation — conversations about how we get ourselves and the stuff we need from one place to another. I’m Bernie Fette with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. In talking about in-vehicle technology, we could make the case that it all started with electric ignition and the end of manual cranks to start the engine. That happened in 1912. The car radio came along in 1930. Power steering, air conditioning and cruise control were introduced in the 1950s. Anti-lock brakes in the 1970s and airbags in the nineties. Car makers today continue their focus on protecting drivers and passengers, adding one new safety feature after another. The full array of those features, though, for some of us, can be a bit overwhelming. And they raise a question: Does all that new technology really make us safer? Or might its distractions at some point begin to actually compromise our safety? That’s our discussion topic today as we welcome Mike Manser, a senior research scientist at TTI and the director of the Center for Transportation Safety. Mike, thanks very much for setting aside some time for us.

Mike Manser (01:38):
Well, you’re welcome. Thanks for inviting me.

Bernie Fette (01:41):
We were planning to talk somewhat broadly about technology advancements in the cars we’re driving, looking at both pros and cons. So if it’s good for you, let’s start with just some of the latest advancements and why they’re good for us. Lane assist, automatic braking, blind spot detection. Others if you’d like. What are your thoughts on those?

Mike Manser (02:03):
Yeah. Vehicles that are being developed now have just a ton of brand new features embedded in them. We mentioned a few, the lane assist, which helps keep the car either centered in the lane or just within the lane boundaries. We have lane departure warning systems that if your car starts to drift outta the lane, it will beep at you or provide you some feedback. We have blind spot detection. We see these little blinkers and lights that go off — some mirrors on the side when a car’s near us to help warn us. There’s just a whole slew of new technologies being introduced into the marketplace. And I’ll be honest, it’s almost overwhelming. The car manufacturers are doing a lot to try and keep drivers safe and they keep putting in more and more technology into these vehicles. And you know, we see a lot of that technology today, but there’s a whole host of new technologies that manufacturers are looking to include into vehicles in the future. Even more stuff that’s gonna try and make driving more safe for everybody.

Bernie Fette (03:10):
Safer for everybody. Yes. And I’ve wondered this myself, but I’ve also read just a little bit about it. If there is a risk that some of the driver assist technologies that we’re talking about can possibly make us complacent, maybe not the best word, but make us a bit lazy about our responsibilities as drivers, creating a a false sense of security. Have you considered that? Do you and your colleagues ever talk about that?

Mike Manser (03:37):
Yeah, that’s a really serious topic right now. So complacency is one example, Bernie, of a larger array of potential issues that may come along with the introduction of technology and the use of that technology. One of the areas might be driver fatigue. So for example, if we have a system that makes driving easier, less stressful, right? It begins to monitor the lane markers for us. So we don’t have to do that as much. That’s a lane keeping system or a lane departure warning system. We’re not doing as much in a car, so we may start to get more tired. We’re not worked up and having to pay attention to the world around us and look at this and look at that. Now we’re sort of taking it easier as a driver from the standpoint of having to look for everything, having to monitor everything, having to respond to everything.

Mike Manser (04:33):
And yes, that can build, we wouldn’t call it complacency, but like in that case, maybe somebody just becomes more fatigued ’cause they’re not having to do anything. They get tired because they’re not having to be a constant player in the act of driving. And I’ll, I’ll give you an example, and this is an example that has come to us from the sporting world. So it’s called the Yerkes Dodson Law. This is a really simple law, okay? Basically says there’s a relationship between how well you can perform and your level of stress. So if you’re under levels of stress that are too low, your performance is low. And as your stress level starts to rise and like giving you lots of things to do and kind of keeping you alert, as that stress level rises a little bit, your performance rises.

Bernie Fette (05:24):
Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>.

Mike Manser (05:24):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. But what we often see, like with golfers and basketball players, hockey players, and again, throughout the sporting world, is if that stress continues to rise even more and it gets too high, performance begins to suffer. It’s called the Yerkes Dodson Law. It’s basically this nice u-shaped curve. So low stress levels, low performance, medium stress levels, good performance, and then too much stress performance drops off. So we see this with like golfers, right? They get stressed out, they got this putt, you know, they gotta make the putt or they’ll lose millions of dollars or whatever, and they choke, right? The stress was just too much and their performance suffered. We have the same thing in driving where if you are under stressed or you don’t have a lot going on, you might get fatigued, you might get, like you said, complacent. You’re not paying attention to the things you, you should be paying attention to.

Mike Manser (06:18):
We have to kind of keep drivers engaged and alert to some degree. So we need to get their quote-unquote stress up just a little bit so that they’re driving more optimally, right? We’re gonna improve their performance, but we have to be really careful because if we overstress a driver, their performance is going to drop again. So this is one of the challenges we have with technology is we put these really wonderful systems into vehicles and one of the potential negative side effects is that drivers become so less stressed that they’re not paying attention to the things they need to, if we make driving super, super easy, drivers are free then to pick up their cell phone right? And talk on it,

Bernie Fette (07:04):
Right.

Mike Manser (07:05):
Right. They are free to turn around and talk to their kids in the backseat. They all of a sudden those other things start to creep in as well. We typically call ’em distractions, right? ’cause it’s a distraction is anything that’s not related to the primary task of driving. We create those opportunities for that driver to engage in these other activities. So what we’re doing as researchers, we’re really trying to find a nice balance between keeping the driver engaged in the primary task of driving, trying to keep them safe, while also using technology to help improve safety even more. Right? I’ll give you another example. So we have another side effect with the introduction of all this technology, okay? And that is basically just drivers pushing back and disliking the technology. We get a lot of feedback from lane departure warning systems, cars start to drift outta the lane a little bit. Beep beep beep.

Bernie Fette (08:01):
Yeah. Thank you for bringing this up by the way, because I wanted to talk about my 2024 vehicle that I bought not too long ago and sounds like you’re gonna be singing my tune here. I’m sorry. Does

Mike Manser (08:12):
Does it have a lane departure? Does it have a lane departure?

Bernie Fette (08:14):
It’s got, it’s got everything. Yeah, but I’m sorry to interrupt. Please go ahead.

Mike Manser (08:19):
Well, it’s a good example. The lane departure, they’re made to remind you when you’re drifting outta the lane that you need to get back to the middle — beep, beep beep. When you drift to the right, same thing when you drift to the left, oftentimes these systems, they do a really wonderful job of reminding people, but the driver gets warnings a lot, right? Like, and after a little while the warnings become an annoyance. They just, they’re like, I’m just so tired of hearing the thing beeping at me. I wasn’t even over the line. I was close to it, but not over. I was paying attention. So drivers start to get basically irritated and annoyed and frustrated with an overload of feedback being provided to them, even though that feedback is intended to help them be more safe. So what happens is, under these systems, uh, if they have the ability to turn that system off, a lot of times drivers will turn it off.

Bernie Fette (09:17):
Exactly. Yeah.

Mike Manser (09:18):
Because they don’t want to hear it. I wouldn’t want to hear it. Yeah. But in that case, they’ve lost the safety benefit of that system altogether by turning it off, right? So we as researchers have to be really careful in designing and deploying systems so that they complement what the driver is doing without becoming an annoyance and without creating conflict between the driver and the system.

Bernie Fette (09:43):
While we’re talking about distractions, I wanted to bring up an example with you, and it’s a rather old example because the distraction issue did not really start with cell phones. Can we argue that this all started when radios were first installed in cars in the 1920s, 1930s? I mean, that’s a technology, right? Yeah.

Mike Manser (10:05):
It’s a technology of a different sort. It’s not really meant to be a safety feature in a vehicle.

Bernie Fette (10:11):
True.

Mike Manser (10:11):
It is a technology in some ways it could be a safety feature if it helps keep the driver alert. So if they’re starting to get to a state where they’re complacent, if for some reason listening to the radio or like in our modern day era podcast and other things helps keep their brain kind of awake and going, that’s not a bad thing by any means.

Bernie Fette (10:35):
And, and let me, I’m glad you mentioned that particular safety factor because whenever I was reading about this a couple of days ago, after the radios were introduced and they started installing these in cars, there were state legislatures in a few states that wanted to ban car radios because they were thought to be too distracting. But then the radio manufacturers argued — consistent with the point that you just made — they argued that car radios helped people become safer drivers because they gave drivers a way to receive hazardous conditions information about the roadways, and help them to avoid becoming drowsy. So which side here has the more legitimate argument?

Mike Manser (11:14):
Neither is correct in one way and, and they’re both correct in the other. If a device in a car, like in this case a radio, which seems pretty innocuous, right? Yeah. It may help you stay awake. Like if you’re listening to it and it’s background noise and it helps you remain vigilant, that’s great. A radio can be a benefit in that case. But there is no doubt that a radio can also be a distraction in, in the sense that if you are attention is focused too much on what the people in the podcast are talking about or the music itself, if that takes your attention away from driving, then that’s a negative thing. So this issue of, is a feature good or is a feature bad? It really depends on how it’s presented to the driver and what the ultimate impact is on the driver.

Mike Manser (12:04):
Does that technology, does that piece of equipment, whatever it happens to be, does it make driving safer? Mm-hmm, <affirmative>? Or does it begin to serve as a distraction, or does it create complacency on behalf of the driver? And oftentimes it’s a very fine edge. One minute something can be very innocuous, and the next minute it can be a, a big distractor. And I’ll say that distractions are nothing new. There’s been a lot of attention really for almost 30 years now on different types of distraction. Cell phones have received the lion’s share of the attention, but we also have radios in the vehicle. We have people who eat when they’re in the vehicle. Kids in the backseat, critical resources for driving are being dedicated to some other task that’s really not related to driving at all. Billboards can be a distraction. You’re spending too much time reading what’s on the billboard.

Mike Manser (13:04):
I hate to say it, but almost anything can be a distraction nowadays. If it takes your attention away from what you’re supposed to do, by definition, that’s a distraction. What a lot of technologies are attempting to do is to provide a benefit to the driver without stepping over that line and becoming a problem where becoming a distraction. And it’s, it’s a really difficult thing to do. For example, some work that I did many years ago with a car manufacturer, they had a system that would detect all the vehicles around your own vehicle and figure out if something happened. What was the best course of action for the driver to take? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So if a lead vehicle suddenly slammed on the brakes, our vehicle could figure out what’s the best course I need to break at a certain rate? I need to turn the wheel and get our vehicle pointed in a different direction.

Mike Manser (13:59):
What we find is that in those split seconds, when somebody has to make a decision, that technology that was intended to really help the driver kind of coax them to do the right thing, to turn the right direction served as a really big distractor. Because if the driver wanted to go left and the car was telling the driver that they should go the other direction, there was a conflict between the two, right? The car was saying, do this, and the driver wants to do that, and all of a sudden there’s this essentially disagreement between the driver and the car. And that was a cause for distraction for the driver. They were thinking, well, what is a car doing? This isn’t right. It’s fighting me. And now all of a sudden the driver doesn’t realize it, and that feedback that was supposed to help the driver suddenly becomes a detriment to performance. Wow. So distraction’s a really interesting thing. We, we really have to be careful of any kind of distraction, anything that takes our attention away from good driving, particularly, we have to be careful of the types of technologies that we introduce into vehicles to make sure that they are providing an overall benefit for the driver and not creating any negative consequences.

Bernie Fette (15:12):
Let me ask you about another consequence. Speaking of consequences, more and more cars are being referred to as computers on wheels. I I hear that phrase a lot.

Mike Manser (15:23):
Yeah.

Bernie Fette (15:23):
Sounds quite impressive in a certain way. But I wonder, <laugh>, is that universally a good thing? Because we have the issue of hacking, right? Bad actors, gaining access to a car’s, computers, turning it into a weapon. What, what are your thoughts there?

Mike Manser (15:40):
Yeah, I think that statement is true in a lot of ways. Cars are really becoming computers on wheels. Modern day cars, brand new ones have a whole series of sub computers and subsystems built into them. You have, uh, suspension systems, steering systems, all driven by computers, controlled by computers. In many cases. You have systems that detect other vehicles, radar or lidar or camera based systems that detect other vehicles and respond to that. They are becoming incredibly computer dependent and controlled by computers. The question of whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing, really, in my eyes, rests on whether all of that computer, hardware, computer software and everything around it enhances safety for a driver or detracts. Some drivers think it, and a lot of people think of in terms of comfort. While all these systems make it more comfortable and easier for me to drive a vehicle, I don’t have to work as hard to maintain lane position, ’cause now I have a system that kind of does that for me. Right? But ultimately for me as a safety researcher, I’m concerned with fatalities. We wanna reduce the number of fatalities. We wanna reduce the number of serious injuries that result from crashes. That’s what I’m looking at. Does that computer enhance safety or does it begin to detract from safety in some way, shape or form?

Bernie Fette (17:11):
Let’s talk just a a bit about full self-driving capability. A number of years ago, some parties were selling the idea of full self-driving capability as a way to end traffic crash fatalities once and for all. How realistic is that claim or that aspiration?

Mike Manser (17:31):
My first response to that is I really hope that that claim is fulfilled. In the United States, we have about 40, 41,000 fatalities a year due to traffic crashes. That equates to just over eighty 747s crashing every single year. So if we think about 500 people per plane, it’s about 80 planes worth of people crashing. It’s an amazing number of people. So I really, really hope that if we can do full self-driving cars, fully autonomous vehicles, and they can reduce or eliminate those fatalities, and then the subsequent injuries, I am all for it. I think I, I really, really hope that that comes to fruition. And I think there’s a lot of promise in that. I think eventually we’re gonna get very, very close to that, if not way in the future, we’ll get to that goal. Ultimately, humans are prone to variations. People respond in different ways, and not all these responses are optimal for performance.

Mike Manser (18:41):
Right? And that leads to maybe an error. Somebody runs off the road and, and crashes. Somebody makes a bad decision, and that results in a crash. Somebody misses a red light and that results in an intersection collision. The technology that are being introduced to vehicles today really are setting the foundation to get us to that full self-driving capability. So the camera sensors, the radar, lidar sensors, et cetera, are really the beginnings of helping us reach that full self-driving state. But the thing is, we have a long ways to go before we get there. So when we talk about, you know, is this a realistic claim or not? I think it is, but we’re really looking at a long horizon before we get there. There are cars out there now that say, yeah, we’re full self-driving, but in fact they’ve got a ways to go. And many of the manufacturers and the federal government, they’ve been investigating autonomous vehicles for quite a number of years, the potential benefits of it.

Mike Manser (19:44):
How do we make this happen? And what they realize is that it’s a really difficult problem to solve to get us to that full self-driving state. And as a result, it’s gonna be really difficult to get fatalities down as a result of crashes, et cetera. So what they’ve done is a lot of these organizations have backed off, instead of aiming solely for full self-driving, now they’ve aimed to just kind of help the driver and make things as optimal as they can right now, while we’re aiming toward that path of full self-driving. So all these technologies are intended to support the driver and make them more safe right now, but they’re not intended to be full self-driving. But they do serve the foundation for getting us to that full self-driving future and a, a state in which we can really reduce the number of crashes and then the subsequent fatalities and injuries.

Bernie Fette (20:39):
I wanted to ask you, Mike, about what I’m gonna refer to as a point of diminishing returns. That may not be fair, but it’s, it’s just the way that it strikes a bit. I’ll give you my own personal example. A few months ago I bought a 2024 vehicle, and you can already guess what features it has. Basically it has, and I bought the basic model and it still has a very full dashboard, I’ll put it that way. The, the console in the middle of the dashboard in front has a lot of icons on it. So nobody gave me a list and asked me to choose a la carte, which advanced technologies I wanted. It was basically an all or none purchase. The dealer did, however, show me how to disable one of them, which I thought was really interesting that it was the dealer who taught me how to disable one of those. So I’m wondering if this is just a bit much, at least for some of us, too much of a good thing.

Mike Manser (21:39):
Yes, in some ways. Let me ask you a related question. Okay. Did anybody give you training on how all of this stuff works together?

Bernie Fette (21:48):
They did, and it lasted all of about 12 minutes. And a friend of mine down the street bought also a 2024 vehicle from the same dealership and told me that his instruction period lasted a little more than an hour. So I think maybe I just need to go back for remedial training or something.

Mike Manser (22:06):
Yeah, yeah. So these two issues in my head are very closely related. Manufacturers are doing a really great job of including systems into vehicles that help improve safety. And we’ve talked about the blind spot monitoring, lane keeping, et cetera. They’re all great systems. It is having an impact, and it’s helping roadways be more safe. The challenge I have is a person who looks at human behavior and cognition for drivers is, is there information overload for a driver? So it used to be, when I started driving long, long time ago, we had a few lights that would pop up. You know, your oil pressure light might turn on and you might have your electrical light if the voltage was too low or the amperage was too low. But now, like you’re saying, you might have dozens of different icons. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you might have an icon that pops up at some time in the future that you have never seen before on the dash.

Mike Manser (23:06):
And there’s no training at all. Very little training in a lot of cases for how to use those systems, for how to interpret the information being presented to a driver. And I get worried that the diminishing returns are not so much in the inclusion of the safety equipment in the vehicle, but in how a driver is able to use all of these systems together. And then, you know, training is a critical part of that. You know, oftentimes, like you said, you know, training is limited to just a little bit of time, but these are incredibly complex systems.

Bernie Fette (23:42):
Right.

Mike Manser (23:43):
We need to help drivers understand these systems. So when they do start providing feedback, they know what that is. Yeah. If the system starts beep, beep, beep, the driver’s not wondering if that’s a forward collision warning or a side collision warning, or if it’s lane departure or lane keeping. They need to know this. It’s up to the manufacturers to help design these systems so that they’re usable by drivers. But there’s also some training needs on the other side to make them safe. So your question about diminishing returns is spot on. I look at it not so much as like diminishing returns in terms of safety, the systems really help drivers, but when you overload the driver, that’s when you start to create problems. When you don’t provide training, that’s where you start to create problems for the driver, right? And this gets exacerbated because one car operates one way and another car operates another way. One safety system, let’s put it in really simple terms, says beep, beep, beep for the forward collision warning system, and another car goes beep, beep beep for a side collision warning system. It’s the same sound for two different systems.

Bernie Fette (24:56):
That’s a really important point. Yeah.

Mike Manser (24:58):
So Bernie, if you go from your car to somebody else’s car, like a rental car, and it provides you with the same kind of sound, but it is for a system that is entirely different, you might respond one way because you think, okay, well this means I gotta hit the brakes. It’s the four collision warning system telling me I have to slow down. But that new car, that beep in that new car has nothing to do with the forward collision warning system. Right. That creates a safety issue for you. And right now there’s some talk about how to make these systems more analogous to each other. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. But you know, at the same time, we want to allow the manufacturers to develop systems that they think are really, really good and allow them that intellectual freedom because they could come up with some really great ideas. But I think in the interim, we just need to be careful and more considerate about the driver and how they use this information

Bernie Fette (25:54):
So we can avoid the human equivalent of a, a language barrier between me and the other car. Yeah,

Mike Manser (26:01):
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Bernie Fette (26:02):
I, I also have to confess here, Mike, that using my example, I’m not necessarily what you would call an early adopter. The last time that I replaced my iPhone, they were trying to sell me an iPhone 13. And I looked at the sales person and I said, look, I want the oldest iPhone that you’ve got.

Mike Manser (26:18):
<laugh>.

Bernie Fette (26:19):
Yeah. And I was serious partly for cost, but partly because I just didn’t feel a need for a lot of the features that the 13 at that time offered. And the response I got was, he stared at me for just a moment, then he said, well, let me check. I think we might have one back in the store room, <laugh>. So they didn’t even have, they didn’t even have them on display. So there are people, you know, joking aside, there are people who are just a little averse to adopting the technologies because they’re not early adopters.

Mike Manser (26:50):
Yeah. And your example is representative of the United States. We have a group of people relatively small who are early adopters. They love the technology, they love the gadgets, they like to explore it and everything. We have people on the other end of that continuum where they don’t want this stuff and they’re hesitant to get it in their car. They’re worried about what it’s gonna do. And then you’ve got a group in the middle who’s like, okay, well if I have to have it, I will. Or maybe they, they’re interested in it, but they’re more receptive, but they’re not gonna jump right out and get it. The technology that’s implemented in vehicles has to cater to all three of those groups. So if somebody is very hesitant to get into new technology, they’re just fearful of it or they don’t like it, but their car has it, what sort of relationship does that person have with their car at that point?

Mike Manser (27:48):
Do they trust that technology? Yeah, the technology may help them be a better driver, but again, if they don’t like it, they don’t trust it, they’re gonna turn it off. And they’ve lost the total benefits of that system to start with. So it’s a really challenging place to be for manufacturers, system developers, and others when developing and deploying these technologies is they have to be mindful of the really wide range of people who will end up using the technology. They need to make sure that it’s usable by everybody. And for the most part, they’re doing a really good job.

Bernie Fette (28:23):
And what you just mentioned about the aversion that some people have toward the use of the technology, we should probably note that that has implications not only for the driver and that driver’s passengers, but it also has implications for other people on the road.

Mike Manser (28:40):
Yeah. Safety is something that I’m really passionate about. And safety is not just for the person driving a car, it’s for the other vehicles and those other drivers around them. It’s for pedestrians, it’s for everybody. You know, the implementation of technology needs to consider this when they’re designing these systems that if it works for the driver, they need to make sure that there’s a benefit for everybody else as well. So we’re not just thinking about safety of our driver, we’re thinking about the safety of everybody in the transportation system network.

Bernie Fette (29:16):
With all the auto technology advancements that have been made as a researcher, where and how do you think we should focus our efforts to take the next big step?

Mike Manser (29:28):
That is a really great question. I know we’ve been talking a lot about vehicle-based technologies.

Bernie Fette (29:35):
Right.

Mike Manser (29:36):
The main transportation safety challenges still reside within the driver. Okay? It’s not technology related at all. Okay? There are many drivers who still don’t make good decisions. They drink and then they go drive. Drinking impaired. Everything they do, all their responses, their decision making when they’re in the car, everything. Drivers still speed. Drivers still don’t buckle their seat belts. So these are all driver related issues. Things within a driver that are factors in transportation safety, and it’s these things that are the hardest to change. Trying to change human behavior is incredibly difficult. So we often look at this in terms of, okay, what are the carrots and sticks that we can use to help change behaviors? And to the extent that we can use vehicle-based technologies as a carrot or a stick, all the better. I’ll give you an example. Okay. There’s some work out there looking at driver monitoring systems.

Mike Manser (30:47):
And these are systems that begin to detect how a driver is responding. They begin to detect how a driver is paying attention to the actual task of driving or the roadway in front. And they’ll do that through things like eye trackers. So there’s a small camera that looks at your face, and if your head is positioned forward, yeah, things are pretty good. Better yet, if it can look at your eyes and determine that you’re looking at the roadway in front of you, that’s a good thing. If you start to look down at, in our case, the radio, which might be a distraction, we talked about this a little earlier, then that’s not a good thing, right? So that’s a driver monitoring system. A driver monitoring system may also look at whether your hands are on the wheel or not. So some car companies can allow you to take your hands off the wheel momentarily under higher automated driving conditions.

Mike Manser (31:41):
Okay? So these driver monitoring systems are really, really valuable in helping to make sure to keep the driver focused on the primary task of driving. Other types of driver monitoring systems are a little different, but they may detect your alcohol level if you’ve been drinking or not. And they’re really trying hard to figure out how much somebody has been drinking. So again, are you over the legal limit or under the legal limit? And then the question is, what to do about that? To me, the biggest advancements in transportation safety are gonna come from helping drivers make better choices and helping them avoid drinking and driving, avoid speeding, which is another main factor of crashes, helping to improve seatbelt use, helping to just generally make better decisions. If technology can begin to address those issues, even just those three issues, those primary driver related crash factors, then we can have a really big impact, a really positive impact on transportation safety.

Bernie Fette (32:47):
Really interesting about the human technology connection there. Last question. What is it that motivates you to show up to work every day? And I know I’ve asked you that in a previous episode, so you’re fine with sticking with your old answer or if you’ve got a new one, that’s fine too. But tell our listeners, what motivates you to show up every day?

Mike Manser (33:08):
The things that motivate me to show up every day are the projects themselves, because they have value for society. They are tackling this larger issue of transportation safety, right? They’re trying to reduce fatalities, they’re trying to reduce serious injuries. To me, that’s critically important element kind of of my being. I happened to be at an event at the Circuit of Americas, and I was kind of inside this fence on the property of the racetrack, but there was a road just bordering the track itself. And that morning there happened to be a crash at a curve. An older gentleman, it was just like five or six in the morning, apparently driving home. And there was a younger gentleman who decided to pass. He was coming in the opposite direction. He passed on the outside in a no passing zone, in a curve, and ran into this older gentleman’s car.

Mike Manser (34:09):
And the older gentleman unfortunately passed away. It was heartbreaking to see the entire family sitting on the ground crying because of the loss of that grandparent. And that’s why I do this work. It’s to prevent situations like that, to prevent a family from having to go through that turmoil and that heartache and all the problems. And you can just imagine a family who saw their grandfather the night before, and the next day that person is gone. They never had a chance to say goodbye. That’s why I go to work in the morning. That’s why I do this stuff, is to help eliminate those types of scenarios.

Bernie Fette (34:56):
Mike Manser — TTI Senior Research Scientist and Director of the Center for Transportation Safety at TTI. Mike, thanks very much. Really — thank you for sharing your time and your insights with us. We appreciate it. The passion that you have is noticeable, so thanks for what you do.

Mike Manser (35:16):
Awesome. Thank you, Bernie. I appreciate it.

Bernie Fette (35:20):
Adaptive cruise control, blind spot warning, lane departure warning, predictive braking. All of these features are designed to make us safer, but if technology is handling more of the driving for us, might it also make us less focused on the task at hand? Are there cases in which those features that are designed to help us might actually hurt us? Is there a point of diminishing returns? We don’t yet know, but here’s what we do know. Despite continual advancements in automotive safety, about 40,000 Americans are dying every year in car crashes. A great many of those result from bad decisions made by whoever is sitting behind the wheel. The biggest obstacles to roadway safety relate to the driver. So maybe the biggest potential for improvement has nothing at all to do with technology. Thanks for listening. Please take just a minute to give us a review, subscribe and share this episode, and please join us next time for another conversation about getting ourselves and the stuff we need from point A to point B. Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of the Texas A&M University System. The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau. I’m your writer and host, Bernie Fette. Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you next time.