Safety is Number One, er… Eight?

It’s been a hard summer, and we’ve lost way too many cyclists in crashes. Talk to any elected official about transportation and they’ll probably tell you this: safety is their top concern.

The evidence, however, shows otherwise.

From The Washington Post August 22, 2006: “Acting Secretary of Transportation Maria Cino said in a statement that the government had ‘zero tolerance’ for any roadway deaths and repeated calls for motorcyclists to wear helmets and for all drivers to buckle up and stay sober.”

What does “zero tolerance” translate to?

Roughly forty-four thousand people die each year on our nation’s roads (about 700 are cyclists, about 4000 pedestrians, and the rest, car occupants). On the average day, over 120 Americans die. More people die on our roads most months than died on 9/11. Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for Americans aged 1-34.

If safety really were the top priority of transportation officials, that simply wouldn’t be the case. We’d be willing to give up other priorities to reduce traffic crashes and save human lives.

Traffic crashes are avoidable. In some countries (Denmark and the Netherlands), traffic fatality rates are roughly one-fifth the rate of the U.S. And officials in those countries are working to reduce crashes even further. In the Netherlands, traffic officials have reduced crash rates roughly 40% in the past ten years. Victoria, Australia (where Melbourne is) saw a 28% reduction in fatalities in two years by aggressively using photo radar. Edinborough, Scotland is seeing 20-30% in crash reductions by using bike boxes, so they’re installing them at all intersections.

PDOT’s traffic safety staff note that if the U.S. had followed the same trends as Australia, Canada, and the European Union since 1990, we’d have 20,000 fewer traffic deaths a year. We’re simply not taking the same action.

In America, we call crashes “accidents” and more or less chalk them up as an acceptable cost of transportation. Traffic deaths have stayed between fourty and fifty thousand a year for over 20 years. In 2005, traffic deaths were at a 15-year high.

We struggle to get single bike boxes installed on the ground. We fine drivers whose negligence kills a few hundred dollars for traffic infractions.

Most of our country’s efforts are designed at make crashes safer (air bags, seat belts, bike helmets) rather than preventing crashes. At the National Traffic Justice Institute two weeks ago, bike and pedestrian advocates gathered to change our mentality from “safe crashing” to crash prevention.

Ideas were many and varied; traffic safety is a complex problem (most crashes have multiple contributing factors — from speeding to distracted driving to poor road engineering).

People who have lost friends and families often called for increasing the criminal penalties for drivers who cause the crashes. While we support that idea (and are drafting legislation), it’s not clear that stronger penalties will dramatically improve driver behavior.

Studies show people are more likely to change behavior if faced with a small penalty that is likely to occur than a large penalty that is less likely. The fact that drivers currently face no “reasonable expectation” that they’ll get a ticket for speeding means they’ll continue to speed. Having figured this out, the UK is using randomized traffic enforcement to create a “reasonable expectation” that people will get caught. Drivers are improving their behavior, and traffic safety is improving.

Other ideas raised during the Institute include using more automated enforcement (stop light cameras, photo radar, black-boxes in cars that report speed and direction during crashes), having a “slow is sexy” campaign, increasing penalties in “kid zones” like school zones, and requiring drivers in fatal crashes to sell their cars. There was some discussion about whether we were going after dangerous drivers, or dangerous driving (while we can all remember examples of multiple-offenders causing deaths, we generally thought the latter was what we’re going after).

We know the major factors contributing to crashes:

• Speed: roughly 42% of American fatalities are related to breaking the speed limit; even more are related to going fast.
• Impairment and Distraction: Whether it’s talking on a cell phone, being intoxicated, being sleepy, driving into a bright sun or changing a CD, driver distraction is a major factor in crashes.
• Road design: Most U.S. roads are designed to feel safe to even those people speeding, and encourage dangerous driving. Roads in many other countries are designed to make speeding difficult if not impossible.

So, what’s the solution? While useful on the margin, getting motorcyclists to wear helmets isn’t going to solve our problem (about 1700 motorcyclists not wearing helmets died last year, about the same number as who were wearing helmets). Giving tickets to fixed-gear bicyclists isn’t going to cut it.

The important steps are clear: slower, undistracted driving; more enforcement, including automated enforcement; better road design; and more people walking and biking, to naturally calm traffic.

The BTA has been drafting various legislative proposals, working with local governments on engineering and education, and lobbying police departments to improve safety.

Reducing traffic fatalities is completely within our ability; many other countries have done it. But if we seriously want to improve safety, it will take resources. It will take leadership. And it will take truly making safety our number one priority.