Cheap Therapy

Last year in Australia, road accidents killed 1635 people (1595 in 2004). And that’s just deaths, doesn’t include injuries. From a purely economic point of view, these deaths cost us billions of dollars, not to mention the emotional suffering involved.

How cheap does technology to save lives have to get before governments and vehicle manufacturers will require its installation in all new vehicles?

For example

(BTW, found a cost/benefit analysis of various road safety measures here)

So, how about

• Anti-skid brakes (been around for years now)
• Side-impact airbags (most brain injuries are caused by torsion of the brain causing tearing within it…)
• Automatic braking (currently only available to people able to afford BMW’s etc.)
• GPS controlled speed restrictions (Why does your car let you do 200km/h in a 100km/h zone? People get booked for doing such speeds). Throw in cruise control, anti-theft tracking, (and possibly satellite navigation) for free. You can already get GPS based systems that will warn you about speed cameras and road hazards.
• Modern anti-theft technology. Lets get rid of the high-speed chase. Already commercially available.

I’d include alcohol interlocks, but I’ve heard varying reports about how well they work. Taxing heavier vehicles is also good (as they cause more pollution, more wear on the road, etc.), their presence on the roads is self re-inforcing and tends to drive consumers to get bigger cars as they’ll assume they’re safer when hit by other big cars.

Really, nobody these days would be able to invent and market the car. The engine is too large and uses too much fuel. Too few safety devices, it’s just a mess of liabilities waiting to happen. Imagine the outrage you’d have if you had a one ton robot that had no safety devices and could travel up to 200km/h, and you wanted to let even one of them lose on the streets, let alone millions of them.

Volvo at least is heading for a zero-crash initiative for 2020. But that’s at least 14 more years of road deaths ahead (and more, assuming everyone doesn’t buy Volvos in 2020).

Meanwhile, as we wait for the free market economy to swing into action, more people are dying every day. Who knows when it’s going to be your turn? Or your loved ones?

Just got my Electronic Frontiers Australia e-blurb, which had an interesting link to the list of comments posted about the review of copyright Fair Use rights. People who commented included Apple, Colm Kiely, NT Govt. Libraries, Museums Australia, EFA, Library Copyright Alliance, Music Council of Australia, International Intellectual Property Alliance, ARIA, Linux Australia, Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (an organisation created by the MPA, and has been joined by Village Roadshow and Roadshow Films), Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, Nine and Seven Networks, and many of the usual suspects.