Welcome back to the latest episode of The Future of Automotive on CBT News, where we put recent automotive and mobility news into the context of the broader themes impacting the industry. 

I’m Steve Greenfield from Automotive Ventures, and I’m glad that you could join us.

Traffic deaths are still high in the U.S.

There was a great article this last week in the Financial Times with some speculation on why American roads are so dangerous.

The key takeaway from the article? While the number of people killed in traffic collisions fell by almost 4% in 2023, the bad news is the mortality rate on US roads is still 25% up from a decade earlier, and three times the rate of the average developed country. 

To put all of this in perspective: there are over 42,000 traffic fatalities in the U.S. each year. And there are about 8,000 pedestrian deaths each year due to vehicles.

There is some glimmer of hope in the data: while the total number of miles driven by Americans increased last year, and US cars continue to grow larger, fatal collisions actually declined last year.

63% of American drivers take trips of less than a mile, compared with just 16% in the UK. But even after adjusting for distance driven, US fatality rates remain double the developed-world average.

The main reasons American roads are so unsafe stem from how Americans drive, not how much they drive.

Regarding vehicle size, there is an abundance of evidence that larger cars are more deadly to pedestrians, but the contribution of America’s bloated fleet to its fatality rates actually turns out to be pretty modest. U.S. pedestrian deaths would be roughly 10% lower if all SUVs and pick-up trucks were replaced with standard-sized cars.

And, the US Is the only country in which the rise in popularity of large cars has coincided with a rise in pedestrian fatalities. So there’s something else going on here.

So the unknown factor may be American drivers themselves.

It turns out that U.S. road deaths have been driven almost exclusively by pedestrian fatalities happening at dusk under fading light when drivers are most likely to be using their phones. A theory emerged that the proliferation of smartphones in a population who, unlike their European counterparts, almost exclusively drive cars with automatic transmissions gives Americans a false sense of security about how dangerous it is to multitask at the wheel. 

Another fact: Americans are twice as likely as Canadians or Europeans to say they find it acceptable to use a phone while driving. And, Americans are much less likely to wear seat belts than most Europeans and also have higher rates of drunk driving.

So, the conclusion is that we can blame driver behaviors in the U.S.and  not the proliferation of larger vehicles. The good news? If this is all attributable to bad driver behavior, then this can be corrected. We can save lives, if we just get drivers to put down their phones, wear their seatbelts and not drive after drinking.

Seems like common sense to me.

Companies to watch 

So, with that, let’s transition to Our Companies to Watch.

Every week we highlight interesting companies in the automotive technology space to keep an eye on. If you read my weekly Intel Report, we showcase a company to watch, and take the opportunity here to share that company with you.

Lookout

Today, our new company to watch is Lookout.

Lookout provides an AI-powered camera for boats to navigate safely on the water.

As a virtual first mate, Lookout watches everything ahead and behind your boat, using advanced computer vision algorithms to spot small vessels, floating debris, buoys, or people in the water for the safest boating experience. 

Low visibility? No problem. Lookout allows you to see through the darkness with infrared vision. A dedicated night vision sensor gives you the view you need to navigate confidently.

The Lookout solution synthesizes data from charts, AIS, computer vision, and the cloud, then fuses it into one intuitive, 3D augmented reality view

The Lookout Camera addresses the top 5 contributing factors of accidents: operator inattention, inexperience, improper lookout, excessive speed, and navigation rules violations.

If you’d like to learn more about Lookout, you can check them out at www.getalookout.com.

So that’s it for this week’s Future of Automotive segment. 

If you’re an AutoTech entrepreneur working on a solution that helps car dealerships, we want to hear from you. We are actively investing out of our DealerFund.  

If you’re interested in joining our Investment Club to make direct investments into AutoTech and Mobility startups, please join. There is no obligation to start seeing our deal flow, and we continue to have attractive investment deals available to our members.

Don’t forget to check out my book, The Future of Automotive Retail, which is available on Amazon.com. And keep an eye out for my new book, “The Future of Mobility”, which is almost done, and will be out soon.

Thanks (as always) for your ongoing support and for tuning into CBT News for this week’s Future of Automotive segment. We’ll see you next week!