The Safest Place in a Car Crash Isn’t the Back Seat Anymore
For decades it was a given that the back seat of a car is the safest place in a crash. Safety researchers now have new recommendations about what to buy and where to sit, highlighting vehicles whose rear seats have the kind of sophisticated seatbelts that have protected front-seat riders for roughly a decade.
Those belts tighten up when sensors detect a crash is imminent. They also can loosen a bit if the occupant is pressing against the belt so hard that the belt itself might cause an injury.
If belts with this better technology aren’t available in the back seat, people 55 and older should sit in the front of newer vehicles with those more sophisticated belts, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Read the article at The New York Times.
Once Driverless Cars are on the Road, Should Human Drivers Be Banned?
Engineers working on driverless cars tell us that the safest response in any emergency is to stop. This will be even safer if the nearby cars all have robot drivers. And robot drivers would be better behaved than human ones, reducing the number of emergencies on the roads.
This is what gives rise to the real ethical challenge of self-driving cars. Once robot drivers are safe enough to allow onto the roads in large numbers, it seems that we should maximize their benefits by banning their dangerous human counterparts from public roads.
Read the article at Phys.org.
Driving Value for Fleets
Chris Conroy, president and CEO of Holman Business Services, leads off our video clips this week, giving us insight into the value proposition of the Holman family of businesses, which includes ARI. Serendipitously, today we learned that Holman Enterprises was named to Computerworld’s 2019 List of 100 Best Places to Work in IT!
I drive a car with advanced driver assist technology and I can relate to Art Liggio’s Safety & Risk column: The Vehicle Safety Technology Paradox: Don’t Forget, You’re the One in Control. Art deftly advocates for driver training on these technologically advanced vehicles and I strongly agree.
Real-world strategies for taking control of your fleet’s fuel spend is the compelling topic of a free webinar this Wednesday, June 20th, at 11 AM ET. You may register here.
Drive safety!
Janice Sutton
Editor in Chief
FLEETCOR Accused of Clean Energy Fraud
About a month after reports surfaced that commercial fleet payments technology firm FLEETCOR is facing a lawsuit over claims of anticompetitive behavior, a new report from Citron Research is accusing the company of clean energy fraud.
On Friday (June 7), MarketWatch said Citron’s report claims FLEETCOR is operating “the largest clean energy fraud in U.S. history,” arguing that the company’s Clean Advantage program, which enables customers to make their fleets carbon neutral or zero emission, uses less than 1 percent of the money customers pay into the program to actually offset carbon footprints.
Read the article at PYMNTS
Are Your Employees Buckling Up?
Seat belts should never have time off
The Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS), through a cooperative agreement with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), has developed a NEW 2Seconds2Click toolkit for employers to establish or enhance employee safety belt initiatives within their organization.
This step-by-step toolkit includes everything you need to create a 4-week seat belt campaign within your workplace.
Wearing a seat belt is the single most effective thing you can do to protect yourself in a crash. According to the most recent Cost of Motor Vehicle Crashes to Employers, crashes cost employers more than $47 BILLION DOLLARS.
