It is a widely known fact that thousands of people die in car accidents every year. It is more dangerous to drive than to fly, we say. To mitigate this, car manufacturers are investing millions in R&D programs that increase safety in vehicles. Of course, "death prevention" is a noble goal - but taking a step back, are cars overshot on safety?
A recent business week article "Cars That Brake When You Don't", highlights new technologies from Honda Motor Co. that prevent accidents by essentially usurping control of the braking mechanism. These cars sense the imminent safety risk, and initiate braking, tighten safety belts, and alert the driver, all in an effort to avoid the accident. One Toyota GM is quoted as saying "The ultimate aim is to create a car that cannot crash."
Again, I must reiterate that this goal is noble. However, is it necessary? From the rollout plans, it seems these high end safety systems (at a cost of $4300 per vehicle) can only be included in luxury vehicles. While it is unlikely that consumers will turn down safety features, how many would pay extra for them? Evidently, at this price tag, very few.
And, isn't that the mark of an overshot product?
Safety First - or is it?
Posted by in Comments (3)
Discussion
Posted: Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 - 5:09 am EST
Yep, and even worse, it's going to leave to incidents like this:
http://www.askaprice.com/torque-article.asp?article=Mercedes_makes_mess_of_safety_demonstration&item=669
Tech is great to a point, but what happens when it fails? Let alone the fact that vehicles can already get viruses when they're wifi-equiped, just like cellphones, etc.
I enjoy your blog, by the way - keep it up! :)
Posted: Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 - 12:02 pm EST
In the days when most cars has carburators, a few luxury manufacturers began to offer electronic fuel injection. Initially, these electronically equipped vehicles were significantly more expensive and less reliable. However, they offered different performance attributes, in that the fuel mixture could be tightly controlled for engine conditions/temperature and easily tuned for low emissions, fuel economy or high performance. Generally, higher engine performance was the initial selling point of the first luxury fuel injection vehicles.
As the fuel injection became accepted more widley, the reliability improved, cost went down, and cars generally performed better: Cars began to start more easily in the cold, deliver consistent performance in a greater range of conditions, and deliver better all round performance for engine size/fuel consumption.
The initial performance attribute for fuel injection was not the one that lead to mass market adoption.
Embryonic attempts to make cars take control in safety critical situations may one day deliver another performance attribute that might make them widely adopted rather than a "market overshot". Although the initial peformance attribute of "luxury safety" seems unlikley to create mass market adoption, futuristic driver-less cars would free people to do other things during their commute, furthermore, cities might demand the technology as they find that self drive vehicles allow for more reliable and higher traffic circulation rates.
;-)
Posted: Tuesday, December 27th, 2005 - 9:21 am EST
In general Im a big fan of the underlying thesis of the innovators dilemma but Im not sure if I agree with your generalization. If safetly was the only vector that Honda was pursuing then Id be inclined to agree with your assessment.. but I can't imagine that it is. With the automobile market being so heavily segmented it is quite likely that segment of buyers exist that may very well be underserved on safety and for whom four grand is well worth the cost. This is certainly in range of the discretionary spending on options that people add-on to a 20-30K car price tag.
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