BIKE: NYTimes.com Article: Once World Leader in Traffic Safety, U.S. Drops to No. 9

[Stuart Werbner]

I'm actually quite impressed that we're still in the top 10.

     __o
   _`\<,_
  (*)/ (*)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stuart Werbner
Annuit Coeptis





>From: pgoetz
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>Subject: BIKE: NYTimes.com Article: Once World Leader in Traffic 
>Safety,U.S. Drops to No. 9 Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 06:56:58 -0500 (EST)
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>This article from NYTimes.com
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>Once World Leader in Traffic Safety, U.S. Drops to No. 9
>
>November 27, 2003
>  By DANNY HAKIM
>
>
>
>
>
>The United States, long the safest place in the world to
>drive and still much better than average among
>industrialized nations, is being surpassed by other
>countries.
>
>Even though the nation has steadily lowered its traffic
>death rates, its ranking has fallen from first to ninth
>over the last 30 years, according to a review of global
>fatality rates adjusted for distances traveled. If the
>United States had kept pace with Australia and Canada,
>about 2,000 fewer Americans would die because of traffic
>accidents every year; if it had the same fatality rate as
>England, it would save 8,500 lives a year.
>
>Many safety experts cite several reasons the United States
>has fallen in the rankings, despite having vehicles
>equipped with safety technology that is at least as
>advanced as, if not more than, any other nation. They
>include lower seat-belt use than other nations; a rise in
>speeding and drunken driving; a big increase in deaths
>among motorcyclists, many of whom do not wear helmets; and
>the proliferation of large sport utility vehicles and
>pickup trucks, which are more dangerous to occupants of
>other vehicles in accidents and roll over more frequently.
>
>"Our fatality rates are lowering, but not to the degree
>they have lowered in other regions of the world," said
>William T. Hollowell, director of the Office of Applied
>Vehicle Safety Research at the National Highway Traffic
>Safety Administration.
>
>Traffic deaths and injuries are growing as a global health
>issue. The World Health Organization, preparing a report on
>the issue, says traffic accidents will become the world's
>third-leading cause of death and disability by 2020, up
>from ninth today - a toll particularly costly because
>victims are so often young adults.
>
>Indeed, automobile accidents will be the main subject of
>World Health Day next April, supplanting diseases like
>H.I.V./AIDS and malaria.
>
>"It's going to be a bigger World Health Day than usual
>because of the magnitude of the issue," said Dr. Etienne
>Krug, director of the World Health Organization's
>department for injuries and violence prevention.
>
>"Because there's very little emphasis on it, and emphasis
>on other health problems, we don't expect to make progress
>on traffic safety, which is why the ranking is expected to
>get worse," Mr. Krug said. He was mainly referring to the
>developing world, where preventing traffic injuries lags
>behind fighting disease.
>
>Industrialized nations like the United States are well
>ahead of developing nations like China, where death rates
>are not only far higher but also rising.
>
>Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta has laid out an
>ambitious target of reducing the nation's traffic death
>rate to 1 death per 100 million miles traveled from 1.5
>deaths by 2008. That would translate into roughly 12,000
>fewer deaths per year, given projections for increased road
>use. Last year in the United States, 42,815 people died in
>traffic accidents, the most since 1990.
>
>"Here we are losing 43,000 people," Mr. Mineta said. "If we
>had that many people die in aviation accidents, we wouldn't
>have an airplane flying. People wouldn't put up with it.
>They ought not to put up with 43,000 uncles, aunts,
>mothers, dads, brothers and friends whose lives are snuffed
>out by traffic accidents."
>
>Getting to his target would require a radically faster pace
>of improvement. As of last year, the death rate in the
>United States had fallen to 1.51 deaths per 100 million
>miles traveled from 1.58 in 1998.
>
>Since 1970, the United States traffic death rate has fallen
>from nearly 4.8 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. By
>2000, the rate in Britain had fallen to 1.2 deaths per 100
>million miles from 6.1 in 1970. The new figure is the
>lowest traffic death rate compiled by the Organization of
>Economic Cooperation and Development, which collects a
>variety of statistics from industrialized countries.
>
>Australia's death rate has fallen from 7.13 in 1971 - the
>country did not estimate distances traveled the previous
>year - to 1.45 in 2001. Canada's death rate is slightly
>less.
>
>Other nations have much higher rates. Turkey's was close to
>11.74 deaths per 100 million miles in 2001 and the Czech
>Republic was 5.21. The economic organization's median
>figure in 2001 was about 2.1 deaths.
>
>The Bush administration is mainly focusing on seat-belt use
>and drunken driving in the near term because they are two
>major areas where the United States lags some other leading
>nations.
>
>Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, administrator of the National Highway
>Traffic Safety Administration, said: "If everybody buckles
>up, we can save between 7,000 and 9,000 lives a year. That
>would drop our fatality rate off the table. The only way
>you get to 1.0 is to deal with these very important human
>factors." Most traffic safety experts agree that the seat
>belt remains the world's most effective safety device. The
>nation's usage rate has risen considerably over the past
>couple of decades, to nearly 80 percent today. But top
>safety regulators in Canada and Australia say their use of
>seat belts is about 10 percentage points higher.
>
>One reason more Canadians and Australians buckle up is
>so-called primary seat-belt laws that allow the police to
>stop motorists simply for not wearing a seat belt. Less
>than half of the states in this country have such laws.
>
>Dr. Runge has been lobbying states to add primary belt
>laws. A provision in a federal highway financing bill
>before Congress would divide $600 million among states that
>either have primary belt laws or reach a 90 percent usage
>rate.
>
>Drunken driving rates are also on the rise in this country.
>Last year, almost 18,000 people died in alcohol-related
>accidents, the most since 1992.
>
>The administration is pushing for broader use of sobriety
>courts, which emphasize counseling and treatment as well as
>jail time. And Dr. Runge wants local jurisdictions to
>designate special prosecutors for drunken driving. Another
>problem is motorcycle deaths, which have risen more than 50
>percent since 1997. Only 20 states require riders to wear
>helmets, down from 47 in 1975, when federal highway
>financing was tied to helmet laws.
>
>The most contentious topic in the safety debate is the
>effect of sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and
>minivans. Such vehicles made up about a fifth of new
>vehicle sales in 1980 but now account for more than half.
>Studies by the traffic safety agency have shown that light
>trucks, particularly big sport utilities and pickups, pose
>considerably more risk to the occupants of cars than other
>cars do.
>
>Sport utilities are also no more safe than cars for their
>own occupants, traffic statistics show, because advantages
>they get from their bulk are offset by a greater propensity
>to roll over.
>
>A new study by two researchers, Marc Ross from the
>University of Michigan and Tom Wenzel from the Lawrence
>Berkeley National Laboratory, estimates that 3,500 fewer
>people would die each year if 60 percent to 80 percent of
>the light trucks - sport utilities, minivans and pickups -
>on the road were cars or station wagons.
>
>But the auto industry has disputed such claims. And other
>studies have attributed thousands of deaths to another
>cause: fuel economy regulations adopted in the 1970's
>forced automakers to make lighter passenger cars. But the
>weights of cars as well as light trucks have been rising
>for the past decade and a half.
>
>Dr. Leonard Evans, a top safety researcher who retired
>after more than three decades at General Motors, said any
>potential improvements in vehicle design would be far
>outweighed by improvements in driver behavior. He believes
>the regulators and the news media are too focused on
>blaming vehicles.
>
>"We've got to have much more focus on avoiding rather than
>surviving crashes," he said.
>
>The administration is aiming at both driver and vehicle.
>
>
>Dr. Runge pressured the industry to collaborate on an
>effort to make sport utilities and pickups less dangerous
>to people in cars. And a revamped rollover rating system,
>due next year, seeks to better inform the public about
>rollovers, which account for more than 10,000 deaths each
>year.
>
>Mr. Hollowell, a top researcher at the traffic safety
>agency, said the death rate in the United States had not
>fallen further for several reasons unique to the country.
>"The motorcycle fatalities have gone up, the rollovers have
>gone up, which is a function of a greater numbers of light
>trucks and vans, and another aspect, in vehicle to vehicle
>crashes, is that we have a changing fleet," he said.
>
>Dr. Runge, who early in his tenure took heat from Detroit
>for critical remarks about sport utilities, said, "We've
>got the safest vehicles in the world, so when you consider
>where we fall in the scheme of things, we can't blame the
>vehicles."
>
>He asserted: "We have a unique fleet in this country and
>we're addressing that. But we could have the perfect
>vehicles, and until we address the human factors we're not
>going to change our ranking."
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/27/national/27SAFE.html?ex=1070934218&ei=1&en=25adb683f1207225
>
>
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