Autodealer Cares About Your Motoring Safety
About Our Campaign
Autodealer Safety Campaign
This year the Autodealer JHB team will be embarking on a safety campaign which we have named Autodealer Cares.
This initiative will be implemented from the 2nd July 2018 and continue throughout the year with planned features all revolving around road safety. It is something which we feel is important considering the amount of deaths on our roads.
What is distracted driving?
Distracted driving encompasses a broad field of activities that us humans engage in, while driving, other than what we should be doing which is, well, driving. These include texting, speaking on the phone, eating, drinking, fixing our appearance, focusing on our passengers and using in-car technologies like the SatNav or infotainment system.
What are we going to do about it?
Here at Autodealer we’ve embraced the fact that technology is here to improve our lives, but also recognise that having the world’s information network in the palm of your hand in the form of a smartphone, does lead to people operating these devices while driving. So we’ve decided to allow technology to work in our favour, by creating a video about distracted driving and we’re going to need your help to make it happen.
How the public has helped
Since there are so many different types of distracted driving activities, we have decided that the best people to decide which types are the most dangerous were our South African road users. After consulting our audience we have come up with what the general public feel are the most dangerous distracted driving activities.
What will we do with this information?
The five most dangerous types of distracted driving have been identified and each will be recreated in a controlled environment. Editor Sean Nurse will drive a car round a race track and set a lap time, after the benchmark is set, we will then have him attempt to do the same thing while carrying out each individual distracted driving activity.
The purpose of this experiment is to demonstrate how distracted driving negatively affects a driver’s ability to be a safe and responsible road user. The use of a race track and a controlled environment is firstly for safety and secondly will serve as an amplified version of what it’s like for a person to take on a task of driving while attempting to complete various tasks.
A final word on distracted driving
The fact that so many people are still guilty of distracted driving either shows a lack of education or ignorance. We’d like to educate as many people as we can while hopefully changing the minds of a driver out there too ignorant to heed the call to stop their distracted driving tendencies.
Other issues
Child safety: This is an issue that is close to our hearts at Autodealer and is something that we see on a daily basis. Child Safety is sometimes neglected with a number of children not placed safely in child seats while their parents or guardians drive. We have witnessed many children standing in moving cars, not wearing seatbelts and sitting on an adults lap. This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
Modern Safety technology: Many vehicles are fitted with advanced safety features that we will be highlighting and explaining, as they can be quite complex. The better our readers understand the advantages of having these technologies the more informed their buying decisions will be. We will also be focusing on safety gadgets such as Dash Cams and their advantages.
General Vehicle Safety: It is sometimes easy to overlook vehicle maintenance with our busy lifestyles. We will be highlighting basic areas for our readers to check. A few examples include; tyre pressure, tyre wear and condition, brakes and wiper blades to name a few.
Peugeot 208 Offers The Right Stuff
Here at Autodealer, we hold road safety in high regard and this is what led us to embark on our Autodealer Cares Safety Campaign. We wanted to take a more practical approach to road safety and the various factors that revolve around this subject.
We enlisted the help of Red Star Raceway which provided us with a safe and secure place to conduct our various distracted driving tests. We also needed a car that would offer a realistic approach to the task at hand, a car that is accessible to a larger portion of road users. It was for this reason that we contacted Peugeot SA for assistance.
With road safety being one of their main priorities as well they offered up a Peugeot 208 for us to use. This little hatchback would provide the ideal platform for us as it features all the must-have safety technology that one expects from a modern hatchback.
The little 208 is fitted, as standard with a host of safety systems that allow it to earn five stars in the EuroNCAP crash safety tests (ESP, ABS, EBA, EBFD etc.). It’s no wonder that the new 208 one of the safest cars in its segment.
Out on track the eager 60kW 1.2-litre three-cylinder Puretech 208 managed to set an impressive undistracted lap time of 1min27.15sec with Autodealer editor Sean Nurse behind the wheel. He applauded the car for its fun-to-drive character and above average cornering ability considering the fact that it is not a performance model.
Inside, we found the interior to be well accommodating in terms of comfort, visibility as well as ergonomics. The large touchscreen infotainment system also helped us conduct other distracted driving tests which included smartphone connectivity via Bluetooth as well as adjusting settings. The system is however easy to use which aids in its safety credentials.
Our time with the Peugeot 208 was brief but we managed to conduct our safety tests and evaluate our reader’s suggestions which have led us to a point in our journey where we can share our findings.
If you are interested in the new Peugeot 208 then be sure to visit your nearest Peugeot dealership for great offers on this car and others.
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Distracted driving: We have already asked our readers to submit their most hated distraction when driving, the result being texting. However, the Autodealer team has identified a few other issues such as eating while driving, talking on the phone, dealing with children and others. We have therefore decided to test a few of these issues on a race track so as to highlight the fact that something such as eating while driving could also be a serious hazard.
The graphs below show how mobile phone usage while driving has had a drastic effect on attention. In our own findings from a simple lap of Red Star Raceway, we noted nearly a twenty second difference while texting and an equal amount when eating versus an undistracted lap.
