I just lately began a new project called Beyond Preparedness . With the initiative, I hope to show people—especially right-leaning preppers—that safety and preparedness include much more than just possessing the correct tools and perhaps some basic training in self-defense and first aid. (If you enjoy reading my posts, don’t worry; I’m not leaving or even slowing down.)
The survivalist community has a lot of doubts about clean technologies, as you can obviously anticipate. People tend to hold on to outdated technology because they believe they will still be useful in the future out of traditionalism and a fear of attempting something new. However, today’s better alternatives exist, such as solar generators in place of gas-powered ones ( I went in depth about why solar is generally better in this article series ).
Some of our readers have realized the benefits of clean technologies, which is why they are now readers, but I wanted to provide those readers with some articles they can share with their skeptic friends to show how clean technologies are actually great for overall safety, including preparedness for emergencies. In order to achieve that, I’ll need to first go over some fundamental emergency management concepts and how we may effectively manage emergencies.
It turns out that EVs pass muster for a situation that occurs frequently: accidental harm. Additionally, less frequent emergencies are assisted by EVs.
THE CYCLE FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT Although there are other variants of this, I’ll use a modified version of FEMAs mission areas for its National Preparedness Goal . The following are the main areas that everyone should concentrate on in an emergency:
Prevention preventing emergencies before they occur Mitigation reducing the effects of those occurrences you can’t control Preparedness being prepared for the remaining effects that you couldn’t avoid or reduce Response the period following an emergency Recovery restoring normalcy and, hopefully, making improvements in readiness for the next emergency Saint Louis has a great summary with a graphic here is a city.
I’ll go into detail on how EVs can assist an individual, a family, or a business with each of these phases in the subsequent articles in this series.
AVOIDANCE OF ACCIDENTS People who are familiar with contemporary linked EVs can probably already guess how an EV contributes to accident avoidance, but we should still go through it because it prepares us for subsequent phases. I won’t talk about stuff like Tesla’s FSD Beta because it isn’t finished yet and testing in-development software on the road raises a whole new set of safety concerns.
The SAE Levels of Autonomy are not that helpful, and SAE is extremely fussy about how we refer to its notions, so I won’t go into them here. They may maintain their current levels, in my opinion, since the sole factor in autonomy is whether the driver or the car manufacturer accepts responsibility. The car is not autonomous in any manner if you are responsible for it. A system is autonomous if a wreck is entirely the fault of the system’s creator. Everything else is marketing filler and information that neither the driver nor their family will likely care about.
Autonomy is not a problem that is now relevant to handling emergencies because there are no vehicles available on the market for a person or small business to purchase that assumes obligation. Driver assistance systems are currently the most popular option for individuals, families, and small enterprises.
Many incidents can be avoided using help systems. For instance, lane keeping assist will actively push you back into the lane by delivering the steering wheel a jolt, and lane departure warning will beep at you when you leave your lane without a turn signal. These systems provide complete accident avoidance.
Another illustration is emergency braking in cars. The system can apply the brakes to prevent a collision when the automobile anticipates that you will collide with anything (by using cameras, radar, or both to make this determination). Or it might at least make you move more slowly, which would decrease the damage (more on that below).
These systems provide you two fantastic benefits. They improve your situational awareness first (a big thing in preparedness). Second, they aid in the kind of split-second decisions that one expert refers to as high risk, low frequency, no discretionary time events—situations where something seriously unpleasant is about to happen and you don’t have time to consider your options. However, a computer still has time to consider the situation.
MITIGATION There is no way to totally prevent accidents, no matter how competent computers become at assisting us while we drive or perhaps even doing it all themselves. Therefore, we must keep reducing the effects of the remaining incidents and preventing injuries and fatalities from occurring as frequently.
Crash safety testing and development have been methods used by vehicle manufacturers for decades. Air bags, soft dashboards, crumple zones, and many other devices are created to lessen collisions and save lives. Although the development of these technologies hasn’t always been perfect—for instance, the initial air bags were more deadly for women—improvements have been made.
EVs improve this in two ways. First, their weight alone helps. In collisions, heavier cars sustain less damage. Further improving collision safety is made possible by the enhanced design flexibility (resulting from the lack of a large internal combustion engine in the construction of cars or trucks).
Additionally, automatic emergency braking lessens the impact of collisions that it cannot avoid. Even if a crash cannot be prevented, lowering the energy involved in it makes individuals safer. Even a small amount of vehicle braking results in less kinetic energy that can damage people and property.
Before we even begin to be prepared for an emergency, a large portion of the fatality that has been haunting the world’s roadways is already solved through mitigation and prevention. So, even before we talk about preparation, we can already see the benefit of including these extra procedures.
Preparation, response, and recovery will be covered in Part 2 to complete the cycle.
Nissan provided the main image.
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