Attached is a press release link regarding a Society of Automotive Engineer's report on a subject that every single driver has personally experienced - Turn Signal Neglect. This is a subject that, until this report, had simply never been studied, which is quite shocking when you look at the numbers of crashes that it causes: 1 to 3 million per year. This makes it worse than Distracted Driving as seen from the attached press release. The base results from the study show that drivers neglect the use of their turn signals in 25% of turns and neglect them in 48% of lane changes.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will spend $50 million each year for the next six years to combat Distracted Driving while the causes and remedies will continue to be debated for a long time. In contrast, there is one singular cause of turn signal neglect: Driver Neglect; and the one answer is Smart Turn Signals . . .and yet there is no large scale investment or research into cause, effect or solutions.
When we look at crash avoidance technologies today, most in government and industry think of lasers, cameras, sonar, radar, GPS locators, vehicle to vehicle radio communication, etc. But we are completely neglecting the most obvious and oldest crash avoidance technology of a driver using a turn signal. Instead of adding hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per vehicle with expensive extra gadgets, we need to first add Smart Turn Signals to all vehicles.
This simple technology actually reduces the cost of the vehicle since the sensors for Smart Turn Signals are the very same sensors used for Stability Control, which is now mandatory on every new car. Further, the turn signal trip mechanism in the steering column can be eliminated, hence, the vehicle cost savings. We can reduce the cost of a vehicle, save lives and reduce crash rates. The Smart Turn Signal actually makes you a better driver because improved turn signal usage habits will be carried over by a driver to other vehicles driven.
This is a no-brainer that needs serious attention if we want to be cost effective in our safety related life saving, crash preventing vehicle expenditures.
