EddieWren | Advanced Drivers of North America

The Latest Cars can NOT Drive Themselves!

If you are feeling drowsy, please don’t trust your car’s gadgets. They are nowhere close to that extent of trust yet…

Overestimating what your latest car can do is a terrifyingly good way to kill yourself or somebody else.

Even driving with one hand off the wheel increases reaction time and reduces a driver’s ability to respond to a sudden crisis such as a front tire blowout, but this driver was way down the ladder from that! (Copyright image, 2019.)

American Drivers aren’t Horny Enough!

Yes, the title contains innuendo but for a serious reason!

If those killed by motor vehicles in parking lots, etc., are included, then over 40,000 people are killed each year in vehicular collisions in the USA [NSC]. By comparison, ‘road rage causes a relatively small… percentage of fatalities on U.S. roadways, linked to 467 fatal crashes in 2015‘ which is roughly 1.2 percent of all crash deaths and 2.7 percent of all homicides.

A standard symbol for the horn — a bugle — in the middle of the steering wheel, but most countries except the USA have made the horn control much more accessible to drivers’ thumbs so that nobody need ever leave go of the wheel to use the horn… an obvious safety advantage. (Copyright image, 2019.)

USA: Buses Letting People Get Off Into Danger

Would YOU, as a driver, unfailingly be expecting people to get off the blue bus in these photos, into the right-hand lane in front of you?

A few days ago, while we were running an advanced driving course in Albany, NY, we saw a bus stop in the second lane from the curb to let people get off, and it was horrifying to watch. Fortunately, no vehicles came.

This is where the CDTA bus stopped — you can clearly see the edge of the open door. The asphalt between it and the curb appears to be a regular lane, for traffic going straight ahead or turning right, and on other occasions we have certainly seen it used in that way. See the continuing sequence of photographs below. (Copyright image, 2019.)

ADoNA Website ‘Search’ Upgrade

Advanced Drivers of North America [ADoNA] is pleased to announce that this website has been restructured to make your searches for various topics easier.

I was just a few miles over the speed limit, officer!

Even some police officers may be heard voicing the opinion that speed, on its own, does not cause crashes. But in safety terms this belief is highly flawed.

Many drivers resent being fined for speeding and some people say that speeding is not dangerous.

Copyright image but viewers are free to share it at will, as long as the image and text remain intact.

Why Allowing No Front Licence Plates is Madness

In many American states and Canadian provinces it seems to be a growing trend that vehicles no longer need to have front licence plates, but from the perspective of serious crimes this is madness.

Here just a parked car, but imagine you were a police officer on your way to the scene of a violent robbery and you had a licence pale number for the criminals. This car is coming towards you and you have no chance of seeing its number. Maybe there’s even a kidnapped woman or child in the vehicle, in mortal danger. Some people think that having the front of the car “prettier,” without a license plate is more important, though! (Copyright image, 2017.)

Are drivers ‘dehumanizing’ bicycle riders around the world?

Some worrying research has emerged about the way that drivers are consciously being careless, or worse, about the safety of bicyclists.

One of our trainees on a ‘silver’ advanced driving course at Advanced Drivers of America had to brake to avoid colliding with this cyclist who, without either a signal or a “life saver” glance over his shoulder, whipped out into a live-traffic lane from the bicycle lane in order to pass the woman in black — not a good way to endear oneself to drivers! (Copyright image, 2018.)

Research:

Parents Can Dramatically Affect Their Children’s Future Safety by the Example they Set

People with children know how much their little ones like to emulate the things that parents do, whether it is an older sister trying to mother her younger siblings or a son playing ball with his daddy.

I took this photograph with my cellphone a few days ago, while parked and waiting for somebody. The mother has left her distracted little girl behind on what is a busy, parking lot road, with both of them seemingly oblivious to the danger. (Copyright image, 2019.)

For better or for worse, children also faithfully copy what they see their parents do on the roads, whether this is in a vehicle or as pedestrians (and this is research, incidentally, not just our opinion).

Getting the Scale and Seriousness of US Road Crashes in Perspective

It is effectively inevitable that road safety advocates will use air crash data to try to get people to understand the staggering seriousness of road crashes when compared to commercial plane crashes, but even then the true scale is rarely stated.

Wikimedia Commons: A Boeing 737 MAX 8 ‘G-TUMA’ TUI Airways (46886857481). Copyright-free photograph by Alan Wilson, from Stilton, Peterborough, Cambs., UK

Drivers in Pick-up Trucks or SUVs are More Likely to Kill Pedestrians

There’s a new report out from the Governors’ Highway Safety Association [GHSA] regarding major increases in the numbers of pedestrians being killed on the roads of the USA, and one of the reasons given for this very regrettable situation is the involvement of pick-up trucks and SUVs.

The high, solid fronts of pick-up trucks and SUVs cause devastating and often fatal injuries to pedestrians and cyclists. By comparison, cars — with their sloping hoods and increased engineering to be safer in collisions with vulnerable road users — are much less likely to kill. (Copyright image, 2017.)

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