Automobile drivers in the United States can take advantage of an important safety advantage today: an automobile's multi-point safety system is a predictor of a crash's severity, regardless of whether a driver is able to see the car ahead, or even whether the driver was wearing a seatbelt.
This is the finding of a new study published in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention, led by Vanderbilt University's Ben Ash.
"We give motorists a control device that tells them when they're about to collide with someone and help them avoid some very serious consequences," Ash said. "If you were wearing a seatbelt, you're much less likely to get into a fatal car crash."
The researchers found that crash risk is significantly lower when an automobile's multi-point safety system is strong, regardless of whether a driver is able to see the car ahead, or even whether the driver was wearing a seatbelt.
U.S. transportation departments have been upgrading multi-point safety systems on their passenger vehicles for decades, to reason that those systems would help reduce the number of fatalities in a car crash. But the new study found that victims of fatal crashes using the new systems were far more likely to be wearing a seatbelt.
"It is a progressive piece of technology that's been around for decades," Ash said. "But we found that the average car is still much safer with the old system, even if the driver was wearing a seatbelt.