Problems like unintended acceleration and distracted driving have blinded public policymakers to more important traffic safety issues, according to a recent report by Adrian Lund, President of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The IIHS has become known as one of the nation’s leading safety advocates, mainly for its demanding testing and rating of vehicles’ crashworthiness. The agency is supported by the insurance industry.
To reduce deaths on America’s roads, Lund says, the most important safety issues that need to be addressed are speeding and running red lights, which he says have gotten short shrift to debates over unintended acceleration and driver distraction. He blames both the media and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for losing focus.
“The hypervisibility of these issues diverts attention from initiatives that have far greater potential to save lives,” he says. “There’s nothing rational about the way we set highway safety priorities.”
Lund suggests that better enforcement of speed limits, wider use of red-light cameras, and the installation of rotaries in place of intersections would help solve these larger problems.
NHTSA spokeswoman Olivia Alair responds that more than 6,000 people were killed and more than half a million injured in 2008 alone in crashes involving distracted drivers. “Safety is the Department of Transportation's number one priority,” she said. “We are going to continue … making sure cars and trucks are safe to drive, and doing whatever else is necessary to keep Americans safe behind the wheel.”
By contrast, more than 11,000 drivers were killed in accidents involving speeding in 2008, according to NHTSA. 2,500 people died in accidents involving intersections with traffic lights, which includes 762 fatalities where a driver was cited for running a red light. Agency statistics show 89 people have died in accidents involving unintended acceleration since 2000.
n the institute’s publication, Status Report, Lund alludes to another reason NHTSA may not be focusing on what IIHS sees as the biggest problems: There is little public support for greater speed-enforcement and traffic cameras. Other “huge highway safety problems fail to attract the same degree of public interest or concern that Toyota does,” he says.
We here at Consumers Union think that there are a number of significant traffic safety problems--including distracted driving, speeding, and red light running--and that raising driver awareness about one of these issues doesn’t preclude doing something to address the others. And sometimes, the public awareness focused on higher-profile problems like those with Toyota and distracted driving can “drive” awareness towards other critical--but perhaps duller--safety problems.
How about you? Do you agree with the government's focus on distracted driving and unintended acceleration? Do you think there's a way the government could address both issues and larger traffic safety problems? And would you favor greater enforcement of speed limits and traffic management?
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