Week 3

In last week's post I said there were three factors leading to an accident: the driver, the car, and the environment. This week we will go over one technology that helps combat some issues that can be caused by a few of these factors.

Electronic stability control (ESC) is a system that controls a car when it begins to lose traction and skid on the road (which typically while turning in a corner). It prevents cars from straying off their course and prevents rollovers (especially prevalent in SUVs because of their high center of gravity). But ESC is not the newest safety technology. Development of ESC began in the late 1980s and began appearing on cars made by Mercedes, BMW, and Toyota. As of 2012, the NHTSA (national highway traffic safety administration) required that all passenger cars sold in the US have ESC. Even though it is not the newest to be developed, it still took a few decades to have ESC standard on all cars. This is a long time, considering ESC can prevent 33% of fatal crashes. This means that over those 20+ years where ESC was not standard, around 200,000 deaths occurred that could have been prevented.

But how does ESC work? A computer monitors the car. When that computer detects the car slipping and losing traction, it applies the brakes on one side of the car to send it in the correct direction. There are two scenarios where ESC is helpful: oversteer and understeer. Oversteer, which typically happens with rear-wheel drive cars, is when the rear wheels lose traction in a turn and do not follow the same path as the front wheels. Understeer, which typically happens with front-wheel drive cars, is when the front tires lose traction. Both can occur when a car attempts to turn at too high of a speed or when the road is icy or wet. There is also "lift-off" over steer, where oversteer is caused by a shift in weight away from the rear tires caused by the driver reducing the amount of throttle applied.

As shown in the diagrams, ESC can prevent these problems and keep the car driving in the proper direction. ESC can correct a driving error by the driver, if he/she enters a corner too fast, and corrects for poor environment conditions, such as when the roads are slick. Electronic stability control is a great technological safety feature on modern cars, but it is relatively old compared to other features we will cover and only prevent certain types of accidents. In next week's post we will cover some newer safety technologies. 

Week 2

Welcome back! In last week's post I introduced the idea of classifying all the different car accidents into different categories: controllable and uncontrollable events.

The controllable events are typically accidents that can be prevented by some input from the driver. These accidents are directly the result of a driver not driving properly. Just to name a few examples, they could be distracted by a phone or the radio or they could be driving too fast. The uncontrollable events are typically accidents where the vehicle malfunctions or there is a special weather condition, like black ice, thick fog or a sudden unexpected obstacle (like a deer or a falling tree). Essentially there are three main variables that can cause an accident: the driver, the car, and the environment.

All these different variables can result in the same accident. For example, a simple fender bender can be caused by a driver talking on the phone and not seeing the car stopped in front of him, by a slick road where the car cannot get any traction to stop, or by the car's brakes giving out. Now there is some cross over. One could argue that, under slick conditions, the environment is not to blame, but the driver for not leaving enough room to brake. It depends on the specific accident, but those are the three main factors contributing to automobile collisions.

In next week's post, after some more research, I'll explain how new technologies can correct for errors in these contributing factors.

Week 1

My first week at Arizona Collision Specialists, started with a quick tour of one of their locations. I got a behind the scenes look at the shop floor, where there were cars in all stages of being fixed. There are multiple sections to the shop, each with its own special machinery. A giant lift held cars so the damage could be scanned by a set of lasers and compared to manufacture dimensions to identify the necessary steps to repairing the vehicle. A paint room housed a couple bumpers and panels waiting to be painted. Another section was for welding and assembly of new parts on the cars.

During this week I also researched the various causes of accidents and attempted to categorize them accordingly by analyzing the circumstances leading up the accidents and by determining the trigger event that led to a chain reaction causing the accident, the ultimate action that caused the accident, and what could have been done to prevent the accident.

All in all it was a good first week away from school. I have more research lined up for next week that I will tell you all about in the next post.