Our attorneys see far too many victims of preventable 18-wheeler and auto accidents. Most of these accidents are not caused by impaired driving or drunk drivers, but by distracted driving; which account for 80% of all motor vehicle accidents.
To combat this problem, General Motors and the Michigan Department of Transportation are teaming up to develop technology that has the potential to reduce non-impaired driver accidents.
The technology is called vehicle-to-infrastructure tech (V2I), which will allow cars to “talk” to each other and to the roads and highways around them.
At the Law Offices of George Salinas, we are cautiously optimistic that this technology could positively impact millions of people in in the future.
In fact, just last month, several development models of the Cadillac CTS were able to receive signals from the infrastructure around them. In this example, the cars were alerted to traffic lights that were soon to change. While the ability to receive information sooner about a traffic light changing may seem small, think about distracted drivers. George was interviewed twice in the past month and stressed the fact that “on average it takes 5 seconds to read a text message, and 3 seconds to get into a car accident.” No one should be reading text messages while they’re driving. However, if an inexperience driver is distracted while approaching an intersection (glancing at their phone, changing their music, checking their email, Snap Chatting, etc), their car alerting them to an upcoming traffic signal could save their life, and the lives of drivers around them. We know because we see dozens of these accidents every year. We want to see less victims of very preventable 18-wheeler and auto accidents walking into our law firm.
In the future, as more cars and roads are outfitted for V2I technology, cars could be able to alert drivers if they are to close to another vehicle, the side of the road, a berm or other hazards. The technology also aims to be completely autonomous. The goal of this technology is not to hand out more tickets, but to be a tool for drivers and to prevent devastating auto accidents. Michigan will be one of the first states to test this technology at scale. They are implementing V2I technology along a three-mile stretch of I-75.
However, our law firm has spent years defending victims from automaker product defect, and we see a lot of worst case scenarios. One potentially devastating outcome of this technology, would be a driver becoming too reliant on the safety features and not giving any attention to their surroundings. If a driver is lulled into a false sense of security, and this technology fails, while they are reading an article or writing an email on their phone in the driver’s seat, the outcome could be fatal.
At the Law Offices of George Salinas, we fight for the rights of victims of accidents that were no fault of their own. We are cautiously optimistic about this technology, and are going to stay engaged with conversations about this technology and the laws that develop as a result.
Do you have thoughts or concerns about this technology?
We encourage you to join us and watch a live stream from the Federal Trade Commission, this Wednesday, June 28, 2017.
The workshop, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 10:00 a.m. EDT at the FTC’s Constitution Center, 400 7th St., SW, Washington, DC. It will be webcast live on the FTC’s website.
If you would like to be reminded about the webcast please email us and we’ll remind you the day of. If you have legal questions during the webcast, we’re here to answer them.
To read more about this technology, please see the following articles:
https://jalopnik.com/michigan-takes-steps-towards-building-the-first-intelli-1795725069?null