Nearly 60 percent of dog owners surveyed by AAA and Kurgo, a pet products company, admit to being distracted by their pet while they’re driving:

• 55 percent have pet their dog;
• 21 percent have allowed Fluffy to sit in their lap;
• 7 percent have given Fifi food and water;
• 5 percent have had play time.

According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, looking away from the road for only two seconds doubles your risk of being in a crash.

While 80 percent of the pet owners surveyed said they don’t use a pet restraint in the car, changing habits may be in the best interest of the pet and the occupants. “An unrestrained 10-pound dog in a crash at 50 mph will exert roughly 500 pounds of pressure, while an unrestrained 80-pound dog in a crash at only 30 mph will exert 2,400 pounds of pressure,” says Beth Mosher, AAA Director of Public Affairs.

Restrained or not, the front seat poses a bigger danger to your pet because of the airbags. Do you remember all the controversy years ago about the harm airbags caused when they deployed on unrestrained adults and smaller adults and children? Even with today’s improved airbag technology, imagine the damage they could do to Fluffy.

The next time you take your canine companion along on a road trip, think about how you can ensure you and Fifi both arrive at your destination safely.

Posted by Angi

The concept defies logic because, after all, the 40-year campaign for safety seats has been about protecting our children in the event of a crash. But the article follows a Tribune investigation of 2008 model year frontal crash tests, during which 31 of 66 children’s car seats flew off their bases or exceeded allowable injury limits. This alarming data was included in thousands of pages of test data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), but it wasn’t specifically publicized. Why? Well, technically, the crash tests were evaluating the vehicles, not the car seats.

Before a car seat can be sold, it must pass a crash test on a bench sled that simulates a 30-mph, head-on collision.  They are not tested in real cars, and they’re aren’t tested for side-impact crashes. In the test results the Tribune analyzed, they weren’t even tested at the same speed: The vehicle crash tests were conducted at 35 mph into a wall.

Common sense tells you it’s nearly impossible to predict the damage from a real-world crash with tests that don’t use real vehicles. In fact, the Tribune found higher injury ratings in the vehicle crash tests when the baby dummy’s head hit the back of the vehicle’s front seats. The sled tests would not predict such injuries because there’s nothing to hit. The bench test doesn’t use anything to replicate the front seat.

Interestingly, in Europe, cars are rated specifically on how well (or how poorly) they protect children. In the United States, it’s not a factor. According to the Tribune, many child safety seats performed poorly even when they were tested in vehicles with five-star safety ratings, and ratings aren’t affected if a vehicle’s back seat breaks apart in a head-on collision.

If you want some comfort in all this, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has ordered a top-to-bottom review of child safety seat regulations and has ordered NHTSA to make crash test data more available to consumers. NHTSA also recalled the two worst performers on the crash test, and one child seat manufacturer has committed to a comprehensive overhaul of its evaluation system. NHTSA is also evaluating improvements for the sled tests, including possibly adding a front seat model.

Parents: What are your thoughts? What would make you feel safe—besides securing your young passengers in a protective bubble or full body armor?

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For another controversial look at the child seat debate, watch this interesting presentation from Steven Levitt author of Freakonomics. About 14:55 in, he advocates a different concept that has yet to take off. Watch now.

A recent article from Business Week reveals the existence of technology that enables vehicles to drive themselves, and this technology is only about 20 years away from being marketed to consumers. As additional benefits, developers say it has the potential to reduce the number of accidents and to help increase fuel efficiency.

But just how does it work? A combination of electronic stability control, adaptive cruise control, blind-spot detection and collision mitigation technologies, now in use by several auto manufacturers, enable a vehicle to be programmed to drive as though a human were behind the wheel.

The technology has been tested and proven at The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge, held in November 2007 at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif.

Entrants were required to build an autonomous vehicle capable of driving in traffic, performing complex maneuvers such as merging, passing, parking and negotiating intersections. It was the first time autonomous vehicles had interacted with both manned and unmanned vehicle traffic in an urban environment. A GM-sponsored team took the first prize of $2 million, and now has the bragging rights of saying they were among the first to make autonomous vehicles a reality.

Although it will likely be another decade or two before this technology becomes widely available, we can look forward to the day when our vehicles will be able to shuttle us around like our own personal concierge. Is this technology something you look forward to using? Let us know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

Sources: MSNBC.com, Darpa.mil