As if any of us in the transportation business needed additional evidence that a significant portion of the populace is hell-bent to destroy themselves without regard to who they may have to carry across the river Styx with them, a new study is out on air bags. From researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University comes information that people are adjusting the way they drive in ways that nullify the improved safety offered by their equipment.
People perversely buy a safety feature so they can take even greater risks.
This new study reminds me that about twenty years ago, a scholar published a journal piece suggesting that traffic safety programs were cruel hoaxes. He contended that if we eliminated traffic accidents as an outlet for the desires of some of us to kill ourselves, even more extreme and potentially disastrous means would be discovered and put to use by the lemming segment of society. Traffic evidently plays an important evolutionary role in removing weak, unstable and self-destructive elements from the gene pool. This kind of thinking does not bode well for designers of collision-avoidance systems for tomorrow's cars. But there may be even more serious ITS ramifications from the reverse spin of Offset Behavior.