Auto-safety technology leaves drivers confused

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Many Americans buying new cars these days are baffled by a torrent of new safety technology.

Some features will automatically turn a car back into its lane if it begins to drift, or hit the brakes if sensors detect that it’s about to rear-end someone else. There are lane-change and blind-spot monitors, drowsiness alerts and cars that can park themselves. Technologies once limited to high-end models such as adaptive cruise control, tire-pressure indicators and rear-view cameras have become more common.

The features hold tremendous potential to reduce deaths and injuries by eliminating collisions or mitigating their severity, safety advocates say.

But there’s one problem: Education on how to use them doesn’t come standard. Bewildered drivers sometimes just turn them off, defeating the safety potential.

“If people don’t understand how that works or what the car is doing, it may startle them or make them uncomfortable,” said Deborah Hersman, president of the National Safety Council. “We want to make sure we’re explaining things to people so that the technology that can make them safer is actually taken advantage of.”

The council and the University of Iowa, along with the Department of Transportation, are kicking off an education campaign today to inform drivers on how the safety features work. The effort includes a website, MyCarDoesWhat.org, with video demonstrations.

In a survey by the university, a majority of drivers expressed uncertainty about the way many of the safety technologies work. About 40 percent reported that their vehicles had behaved in unexpected ways. The least understood technology was adaptive cruise control, which can slow or speed up a vehicle in order to maintain a constant following distance. That technology has been available in some models for at least a decade.

The features vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, from model to model and from one options package to another.

Owner’s manuals are falling short, safety advocates say. They have become “documents written by lawyers for lawyers,” said Clarence Ditlow, executive director at the Center for Auto Safety.

“From perhaps a 50-page understandable document 20 years ago, they have gone to a 500-page opus that is intimidating to all but the most studious car buyer,” he said.

Some manufacturers offer CDs or DVDs on how to use safety systems, but “most of the time drivers don’t actually take the time to review them,” said Peter Kissinger, president of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.