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- Crash Avoidance Shopping for a vehicle with features intended to prevent crashes in the first place may seem as important as looking for vehicle features to protect you when a crash occurs. Basic crash avoidance features like brakes, lights, and turn signals are essential, but few of the more advanced features promoted for crash avoidance have demonstrated they reduce crashes.
Automakers may tout features like traction control and four-wheel-drive to avoid crashes, and these may indeed improve performance on certain road conditions. But they have more to do with enhanced performance, faster starts, and cornering than with safety. There's no evidence they prevent crashes.
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- Anti-lock brakes now are widely available features. When a driver brakes hard with conventional brakes, the wheels may lock and cause skidding, loss of control, and long stopping distances on wet or slippery roads. Anti-lock pump brakes automatically, many times a second, to prevent lockup and enable a driver to maintain steering control. This also can mean substantially shorter stopping distances on wet and slippery roads but not on dry road.
- Daytime running lights, activated by the ignition switch, typically are high-beam headlights at reduced intensity or low-beam headlights at full or reduced power. By increasing the contrast between vehicles and their backgrounds, making the vehicles more visible to oncoming drivers, these lights can prevent some other vehicles from running into you during the day.
For more information, visit the web site of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety at http://www.hwysafety.org.
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