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Technology
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2006-09-28 22:44:31-04
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Car safety system promotes unsafe driving habits
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Washington, Sept 29: A new study has revealed that air bags and anti-lock braking systems don't reduce the likelihood of accidents, but on the contrary, may be an encouraging factor for aggressive driving. Professor Fred Mannering, a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University, said that though this behaviour, called the offset hypotheses, may seem paradoxical, it showed that consumers adapt to innovations meant to improve safety by becoming less vigilant. "When anti-lock brakes were first introduced, insurance companies noticed the accident rates for those cars increased. We decided to see whether the offset hypothesis could explain this phenomenon," he said. The researchers analysed motor vehicle data from the state of Washington over a five-year period beginning in 1992. "We used that time period because that's when air bags started getting introduced very rapidly, and we wanted to track the same drivers over that time frame to see whether the new safety features reduced their accident and injury rate," Mannering said. "Our findings suggest the offset hypothesis is occurring and it is sufficient to counter the modest technological benefits of airbags and anti-lock brakes," he added The paper was authored by Clifford Winston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Vikram Maheshri, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley; and Mannering. The study is published in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.
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