Source: NHTSA

A new book released to compare insurance costs for vehicles. The NHTSA has released this consumer information guide free of charge. You can view the copy of the book by clicking on this link
2008 booklet

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has provided the information in this booklet in compliance with Federal law as an aid to consumers considering the purchase of new vehicles. The booklet compares differences in insurance costs for different makes and models of passenger cars, utility vehicles, light trucks, and vans on the basis of damage susceptibility for the vehicle. However, it does not indicate a vehicle’s relative safety for occupants

Text messaging, talking on a cell phone, styling hair, watching a movie, writing a grocery list, nursing a baby or putting in contact lenses: Secondary activities have become an everyday occurrence behind the wheel of American motorists. A growing shift in focus from the roadway to a multitude of other tasks impairs the ability of modern drivers, and the U.S. traffic statistics mark this drastic change.

Even though research shows that certain influences (such as drowsiness or conversation) cause greater impairment than driving drunk, over 7 million people believe that their focus is unaffected by these behaviors. (Liverpool Victoria)

Distracted driving has eclipsed drunk driving as the Number One safety concern of the driving public.

Facts about Distracted Driving:

Distracted driving is the number one killer of American teens. Alcohol-related accidents among teens have dropped. But teenage traffic fatalities have remained unchanged, because distracted driving is on the rise. (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance Study and NHTSA Study)
While over 90% of teen drivers say they don’t drink and drive, nine out of 10 say they’ve seen passengers distracting the driver, or drivers using cell phones. (National Teen Driver Survey)
Brain power used while driving decreases by 40% when a driver listens to conversation or music. (Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University Study)
More than 80% of drivers admit to blatantly hazardous behavior: changing clothes, steering with a foot, painting nails and shaving. (Nationwide Mutual Insurance Survey)
Drivers on mobile phones are more impaired than drivers at .08 BAC. (University of Utah Study)
An estimated million people each day chat on their mobile or send text messages while driving. (The Herald)

Enforcing vehicle laws means opportunities for Lanham company by Kevin J. Shay | Staff Writer Christopher Anderson⁄The Gazette

‘‘Optotraffic was started in response to our looking for spinoffs to the commercial markets,” said J. Marcos Sirota, president and CEO of Sigma Space. Optotraffic’s technology is used to enforce traffic laws.

Some Maryland companies are getting a boost from a growing law enforcement trend: using cameras to catch speeders and red-light runners. Among those is Optotraffic, a subsidiary of aerospace engineering company Sigma Space Corp. of Lanham. Optotraffic is involved in all phases of the process — design, development, installation, monitoring, violation processing and public education support.

The company has conducted numerous traffic studies employing the technology in Maryland, including in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, concluding what may be obvious to many drivers: Very few people drive the speed limit. Optotraffic has a contract for red-light enforcement cameras in Edmonston and is negotiating with two other suburban Maryland cities, said J. Marcos Sirota, president and CEO of Sigma Space.

In addition, the company recently obtained a patent for a compact system that uses laser radiation in the form of optical pulses to determine vehicles’ speeds. The new system, which operates with a sensor, can monitor vehicles in several lanes and record only those that actually travel a fixed speed above the limit, Sirota said. He co-founded Sigma about a decade ago, and has seen it grow from a handful of employees to about 100 now. Revenues grew about 58 percent, to $12.5 million, from 2006 to 2007. The Optotraffic subsidiary formed a few years ago.

‘‘We are using [the new system] already onred-light enforcement and tested it significantly on speed enforcement,” Sirota said. ‘‘Our state-of-the-art detection systems, coupled with high-resolution photo and video systems, ensure the highest exposure and prosecutable rates.”

While the use of enforcement cameras is growing, the increase is not as fast as some would like, said Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association in Washington, D.C. Many more jurisdictions across the nation use red-light cameras than speed cameras — about 300 to 35, he said.

Red-light cameras have been used in Maryland for years, while Montgomery County became the first jurisdiction in the state to employ speed systems last year. The county recently awarded a contract worth up to $19 million to install and maintain 24 speed-enforcement cameras to Affiliated Computer Services, a Dallas information technology company.

By BILL VLASIC Published: February 12, 2008

DETROIT — Drivers have never had so many distractions tempting them to take their eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel.

Talking on cellphones and typing text messages while driving has already led to bans in many states. But now auto companies, likening their latest models to living rooms on the road, are turning cars into cocoons of communication systems and high-tech entertainment. Some drivers are packing their car interiors with G.P.S. navigation screens, portable DVD players and even computer keyboards and printers.

State Senator Carl L. Marcellino of New York learned this firsthand while riding in a cab in Miami — the driver was watching a boxing match on a television mounted on the dashboard. “I can understand a monitor in the rear, but up front it is a different world,” said Mr. Marcellino, who sponsored a bill last year to ban all “display generating devices” in the driver’s view. New York already has a law against TV sets in the front seat. The driver shouldn’t be doing anything other than driving,” Mr. Marcellino said.

Motorists have always engaged in risky behavior, whether it is eating a sandwich, arguing with a spouse, applying makeup or studying a map while speeding down the interstate. But safety experts say the influx of electronics is turning cars into sometimes chaotic — and distracting — moving family rooms.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 80 percent of vehicle crashes and 65 percent of close calls are caused in part by driver distraction.

And some devastating accidents have drawn further attention to the dangers. Last June, five teenage girls were driving to a vacation home in upstate New York when their sport utility vehicle crashed head-on into a tractor-trailer, killing all of them.

The police later learned from phone records that the driver had been typing text messages on her phone just before she swerved out of her lane. Toxicology tests ruled out alcohol and drugs as possible causes. The rise in distraction-related accidents is chilling to auto-safety advocates who typically study air bags and rollovers.

Nick Bunkley and Mary M. Chapman contributed reporting.

February 4, 2008
New research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that speed cameras reduce highway speeds, the Governors Highway Safety Association said Jan. 31. IIHS studied Scottsdale, Ariz., and the Washington, D.C. suburb of Montgomery County, Md., which both have implemented cameras.
About 13,000 U.S. deaths per year result from speeding-related accidents, a total that represents about one-third of all traffic fatalities. “Despite progress in so many other areas of highway safety, as a nation, little success has been shown at addressing the speeding challenge. There is little public recognition of the problem,” GHSA said, “and . . . law enforcement faces numerous obstacles enforcing speed limit laws.” GHSA said its survey found that jurisdictions believe increased enforcement of speeding-related laws has become very difficult because of uncertainty in highway safety funding and a smaller number of officers because of retirements, as well as an increased emphasis on homeland security issues.
>In 2006, Scottsdale became the first U.S. city to demonstrate the effectiveness of fixed speed cameras on a major highway. Before the cameras were installed, 15 percent of drivers were driving faster than 75 mph (the posted speed limit it is 65 mph). The new IIHS study showed that, with the cameras in place, the number of violators plunged to 1 to 2 percent. The Scottsdale 101 Program Evaluation estimated the total number of target crashes in non-peak periods was reduced by about 54 percent.
Montgomery County is using its cameras to enforce limits of 35 mph or less in residential areas and school zones. Since the installation of the cameras, the percentage of vehicles going more than 10 mph faster than the posted limits fell by 70 percent. Only about 35 jurisdictions in the country use speed cameras in their enforcement efforts, said GHSA, which said that the number “must be greatly increased if we are to make any progress at reducing speed-related fatalities. GHSA looks forward to more jurisdictions implementing speed camera programs and hopes to draw further attention to the speeding issue when we hold our 2008 Annual Meeting in Scottsdale this fall.”