Whats more important in road safety?

Friendly Stranger..

Well all three of those components are important to road safety but I would have to say, the driving conditions. Some would argue that the driver is the most important but here is what is true. No matter what else is going on, if you are driving in un-safe conditions you will likely end up in an accident. What I mean is, driving in icy or wintry weather is dangerous because there is an increased risk in an accident due to the conditions. Why do you think schools close when icy conditions are on the road? It is because the school systems do not want to risk children being in accidents because of the conditions. Even when there are wintry conditions on the road, news anchors alert all drivers to stay off of the roads if they can. That is because it is dangerous. Driving in wintry weather is a huge deal. Many have died and been seriously injured. Conditions like those should be avoided at all costs.

Firecracker .

The driver, always.
I will use The Friendly Stranger's answer to illustrate my point.
In all that he describes, there is one constant - the driver.

The car does nothing until the driver commands it to.
The conditions have no effect until the driver operates the vehicle.

The driver is the only one who decides to operate a vehicle in inclement weather. Without this decision, nothing happens.

John Paul

The Driver is most important to road safety.

the lock man

the driving conditions- blizzard/hurricane ect

bustersmycat

I think you would need to research accident statistics on this one.

As far as I know, the vast majority of accidents are caused by driver error.

Of course, when the cause is "loss of control", it is difficult to determine if the cause of the loss of control was road conditions or failure of the driver to accomodate to road conditions, or if there was a mechanical failure that led to loss of control (one could include worn tires as a "mechanical" cause).

I suspect that road conditions are the second most important cause of accidents (often but not always made worse by driver error, driver failure to adjust to change in conditions), followed by vehicle-related causes.

I am certain that those of us who drive in winter conditions all have a few stories about how the car slid or failed to stop even though we were driving very cautiously. Hidden ice, a sudden deep patch of snow, and things like that can happen even to the best of drivers and most of us are more or less just plain average drivers whether we believe otherwise or not.

maralex_inc

The Driver.
Any car is as safe as the driver no matter what road lies ahead. Frankly it's rather funny how people seek out the most advanced in car safety forgetting that incapable driver will render most of that safety gear useless. It is all in the driver.

UCANTCME

1. The driver.

2. The car.

3. The road conditions.

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