Distracted drivers kill all too
many folks every day. Fortunately, there’s a solution in our automotive
rearview mirror.
Motor vehicle crashes is the
second largest type of fatal unintentional
injury for adults in the US, following poisoning. Unintentional injuries are
the third-leading cause of adult deaths, after heart disease and cancer. According
to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 37,133 people died in
motor vehicle crashes in 2017. Of these fatalities, 3,166 people died due to
drivers’ distracted driving, representing 8.5% of total traffic
fatalities. Distracted driving each year also causes over 300,000
accidents that result in moderate or severe injuries. Distractions such as
using a cell phone, a navigation app, tuning your SiriusXM radio to your fav
channel or operating SoundCloud and Spotify have collectively contributed to a
lot of pain, grief and heartbreak.
More prosaic distractions while driving include eating an In-N-Out burger
or sipping your Peets double latté, conversing with passengers and looking at
the passing scenery. I mentioned in a previous blog
that “driverless” Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) have caused fatalities. Last year when
driving in “automatic mode,” an Uber AV in Tempe, AZ hit and killed a pedestrian.
What was the car’s human “standby driver” doing? He was totally distracted by
viewing Hulu rather than the road ahead.
There is a direct relationship between increased automotive automation
and mounting deaths and injuries due to distracted driving.
One of the first significant advancements in vehicle automation was the
automatic transmission that replaced the standard 3-speed manual (stick-shift)
transmissions. The first reliable, fully automatic “hydra-matic” transmission
appeared in the 1940 Oldsmobile. It was a popular $50 option, which converts to
$893 in 2018 dollars. The 1940 Olds 4-door touring sedan’s MSRP was $963. By 1950 almost every General Motors’ nameplate car offered an
automatic transmission.
A myriad of other devices have been introduced after the 1940 hydra-matic
transmission to advance the car-driving experience, including backup cameras.
These cameras became mandatory on new cars in 2018, and like many other driving
improvements are intended to increase safety and prevent accidents. The
percentage of new cars sold with backup cameras doubled to 68% between 2008 and 2011. However, during those three years
the backup fatality rate declined by just 31% and backup injuries dropped only
8%. Many drivers have apparently become so reliant on their backup screens that
they experienced a collision or near miss while driving other vehicles. Have
diminishing returns come to the introduction of evermore added car safety
systems? It seems so, but not to worry.
There is one automotive feature available today that can increase a
driver’s attentiveness instead of shrinking it — the manual transmission. By its
design, a stick-shift transmission successfully mandates increased driver
attention and action. You have to shift with your right hand while using your
left foot to depress the clutch pedal to increase the car’s speed. When
manually shifting gears it’s practically impossible to safely hold a cellphone
or a Peets cup; although unfortunately I’m sure it’s been attempted many times.
The vast majority of new cars now have automatic transmissions; only 2%
of all vehicles sold in 2018 had manual transmissions. They have been left on America’s
dusty roadsides. This is true even in the last bastion of manual vehicle-dom,
sports and performance cars. Only 20% of Porsche 911 and Boxster purchasers,
cars that I’ve greatly enjoyed driving, now buy one with a manual 6-speed
transmission. The BMW 3-series has a manual take rate of less than ten percent.
You can no longer buy a manual-shift for a new Ferrari or Lamborghini,
allegedly for performance reasons. Mamma Mia!
“Who would have thought automating simple things like shifting gears
would have made it so much easier to pick up the smartphone?” declares Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at MIT. He asserts when new
technology eliminates a driving task (like manual shifting); drivers tend to
look for other activities and distractions to fill the time.
As a confirmed, long-time gear-head[1],
I believe returning to more manual shifting would be a fine means of reducing
the nasty consequences of distracted driving. I have been happily and manually
shifting cars’ transmissions for a bit over 50 years.
The first manual transmission car I drove was a maroon 1966 Pontiac GTO
Tri-Power coupe, as shown below. It had a floor-mounted Hurst close-ratio
4-speed transmission with a 3.89 limited slip rear differential. Shifting gears
was a central part of this car’s delight, laying rubber was a second.
The 1966 GTO inaugurated the trend soon followed by each of the three other
domestic car manufacturers of successfully selling “muscle cars,”
high-horsepower coupes. The GTO’s fuel consumption was exorbitant; the price of
gas thankfully was a diminutive $0.32/gallon. [You can’t even count that low,
can you?] Those were the days. The GTO’s 6.4L (389 cubic inch) V-8 engine
produced 360hp at 5200 rpm. It reached 60 MPH in 5.8 seconds and weighed 3,600 lb.
The 1966 GTO was so emblematic of “the times” that it was featured on a 2013 US
postage stamp.
The Hurst shifter that my GTO benefited from was the best manual
transmission made in the US during the 1960s and early 1970s. It also had great
caché. Automotive historian Mike Mueller has noted, "If you didn't have a Hurst shifter in your supercar, you were a
mild-mannered loser.” No matter what gear it was in, my GTO was far more adept
at going straight and fast than quickly following twisty roads. I fully
realized this shortcoming after ending up in a farmer’s soon-to-be planted corn
field having misjudged the car’s higher-speed stability on curvy rural roads. So it goes.
After some time, I traded in the GTO and bought my first, far better
handling sports car. I have manually shifted Fiats, Alfas, a Jeep, a Land Rover
and Porsches. The current, far more curve-compliant car that I manually
shift is a Boxster S, shown above. Its 3.2L (193.9 cu-in) flat 6 cylinder engine produces
280hp at 6200 rpm. It has a short-throw 6 speed manual transmission. My Boxster
S reaches 62MPH in 5.5 seconds and weighs 2,966lb. I’ve never ended up in a
corn field with this mid-engine coupe. It displays renowned handling on
virtually all roads. Driving this stick-shift car is not a distracted
experience.
[1]
My mother told the story many times about how she taught me the alphabet at a young
age. Because even as a toddler I was fascinated by cars, she would walk me over
to a car, show me its nameplate, say a Studebaker, and have me say the individual
letters. After lots of such car-finding excursions I knew many of the alphabet’s
letters (and the cars themselves). Thanks Mom.
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