Who'd a Thunk it?

The following article appeared in a previous issue of the DriveCam e-newsletter. In recognition of Henry Ford's birthday (July 30, 1863), the editors at "In the Driver's Seat" have chosen to feature the article again. Enjoy!

Who'd a Thunk it?
By Bruce Moeller, president and CEO of DriveCam Inc.

Cue the dream music and rev up the time machine.

In honor of the July birthday of Henry Ford, one of America's foremost industrial leaders, it makes sense that we go back in our imaginations to the time of Ford and his contemporaries trying to develop their iron horses, which could replace real horses for the privileged and the wealthy.

Imagine what it must have been like to live in a world that pretty much revolved around small rural towns, their surrounding farms, and the local church.

Traveling was a genuine ordeal involving a real live horse and carriage. If you really wanted to go somewhere, you'd better pack a lunch, water for the horse, tools to repair the carriage tires and liniment to rub on those sore muscles at the end of the day.

There were no roads, no pavement, no gas stations, no mini marts, and no cell phones - not even a McDonald's!

The children didn't have entertainment systems to occupy them, the parents had no radios or cell phones to divert their attention.

It's an ugly thought!

Enough to get early entrepreneurs like Henry to decide, "There's got to be a better way!"

Of course I wasn't there, but in my imagination, the earliest conversations with the future motor industry moguls and their prospective investors might have gone something like this:

"Thanks for seeing me and looking at my machine to revolutionize travel and someday replace horses," opens Henry.

"How long have you hated animals, son?"

"I don't hate animals at all, I just see a better, faster, cheaper way to get from here to there."

"But there are no roads, and what do you feed 'em?"

"They can run on the ruts worn into the ground by the carriages and they run on oil! That's part of the beauty of this. You can get a gallon of that stuff for a penny or two and it'll run for miles on that gallon. It's cheap and plentiful just laying in the ground and it'll never cost more than a nickel a gallon."

"Okay, I buy that part, but that machine will be expensive to make and only a few of the most wealthy people will ever be able and willing to buy one. Son, you've got to think about markets that can reach thousands of people, not just dozens."

"This part is even better than the oil part. I'm going to pay my workers enough money so that they can buy them too which will help create demand and effectively create a middle class!"

"Son, how long have you been a Communist?"

Dream music back again and we fast forward to the present.

How could they have possibly envisioned that their iron horse would someday create millions of miles of paved roads and hundreds of thousands of gas stations and roadside motels and restaurants and all of the commerce and growth that made our nostalgic longing for the old days an almost extinct memory?

With all the economic growth and benefit and infrastructure creating hundreds of new industries and thousands of new businesses also came the part that nobody could have or would have envisioned.

Today there are around 700 million vehicles clogging almost every major artery leading to our huge and crowded cities, creating miserable traffic jams, hot and short tempers, and ever increasing more diversions built into the equation. Now while we are ironically getting from here to there faster and better than we used to by horse and carriage, we have to wait in long lines of traffic to complete our journey.

So we need entertainment, diversion, sustenance, and efficiency devices.

Enter major new industries to accommodate this new need. We have fast food and drive through coffee, Nintendo and DVD movies, satellite radio, cigarettes and cell phones!

Well an unintended consequence of 700 million vehicles jamming up on all the world's roads with many wonderful diversions making all this travel more enjoyable or at least tolerable is: 1.2 million annual fatalities, 50 million injuries, 500 million unsafe acts or near misses costing $518 billion in property and casualty losses.

Not to worry though, because this spawns several new industries to repair the cars and the people, insure them against future loss, reconstruct what actually happened and who was at fault when those 700 million cars and trucks ran into one another 50 million times, and to litigate against whomever was paying the least attention while driving and thusly assign responsibility for the above mess.

Oh, and at least one more industry is born: Driver Risk Management (DRM).

DriveCam exists to take risk out of driving and reduce the frequency and also the severity of all those unsafe driving behaviors and to objectively report the truth as to what actually happened when an accident or fatality unfortunately occurred.

So these brave entrepreneurs of a century ago knew there had to be a better way and the world's productivity has grown exponentially because of it, but they never thought it would result in so much chaos and confusion along with all the benefit to society. If they had, they would have decided to build DRM technology into every one of their vehicles as standard operating equipment.

Except that this technology hadn't been invented yet, nor had power steering, power brakes, seat belts and on and on.

Now we have the need, the technology and most importantly, the responsibility to educate and improve driving behavior as driving becomes more complex, expensive and risky.

So this is both the cost and the opportunity that arises with innovation.

Who'd a thunk it?