U.S. headed wrong way on road safety

We often use this platform to remind people of the importance of safe and attentive driving practices to ensure everyone on the road reaches their destinations safely.

But there is another side to the highway safety equation, and that has to do with the decisions made by the people in charge of our highways and vehicle regulations.

A good example of the intersection between government and driver responsibility is road safety during the winter. It’s up to government crews to make sure roads are as clear as possible during and after winter storms. But it’s equally important that motorists drive with caution. Last winter, according to PennDOT, there were 266 crashes on snowy, slushy or ice-covered state roads in which aggressive driving behaviors such as speeding and rapid lane changes were factors. Two people died in those accidents.

Motorists must be prepared for changes in road conditions, allowing extra time during inclement weather and maintaining a safe distance from plow trucks. And in all driving conditions motorists can make travel safer by avoiding distractions, driving at a reasonable speed, staying sober and showing courtesy to other drivers.

A recent New York Times report pointed out that America’s highways could be safer if the people in charge of them and automakers did more to encourage safe driving practices. It noted that while other developed countries have seen fewer traffic fatalities over the past decade, those statistics are getting worse in America.

What’s most distressing about this is that there is little outcry about the situation. It seems people just accept it.

In 2021, nearly 43,000 people died on American roads, the government estimates, with cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians the most vulnerable. Experts quoted by the Times say this is because U.S. roads are designed to move cars quickly, with the safety of others who use the roads too often treated as an afterthought.

Researcher Yonah Freemark told the Times that other countries have been taking pedestrian and cyclist safety far more seriously than America has, making it a priority in vehicle and street design. Other countries lowered speed limits and built more protected bike lanes. They moved faster in making standard in-vehicle technology like automatic braking systems that detect pedestrians, and vehicle hoods that are less deadly to them. They made heavy use of roundabouts that reduce the danger at intersections.

Meanwhile U.S. vehicles have grown bigger and thus deadlier to those they hit. Many states curb the ability of local governments to set lower speed limits.

The U.S. and France had similar per capita fatality rates in the 1990s, yet Americans today are three times as likely to die in a traffic crash, Freemark’s research found.

“We are not the only country with alcohol,” said Beth Osborne, director of the advocacy group Transportation for America. “We’re not the only country with smartphones and distraction. We were not the only country impacted by the worldwide pandemic.”

Rather, she said, other countries have designed transportation systems where human emotion and error are less likely to produce deadly results on roadways.

Advocates say the U.S. should be outfitting trucks with side underride guards to prevent people from being pulled underneath or narrowing the roads that cars share with bikes so that drivers naturally drive slower.

We encourage our government leaders to use the infrastructure funding available to create a safer environment.

But ultimately our safety comes down to the choices people make and a realization that the current state of affairs is unacceptable.

“We need to change the culture that accepts this level of death and injury,” former New York City Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg told the Times. “We’re horrified when State Department employees lose their lives overseas. We need to create that same sense of urgency when it comes to roadway deaths.”

Let’s change that mentality when it comes to our own behavior on the roads and what we demand from officials in charge of highway safety.