The havoc on our roads

Highway carnage kills thousands, but we worry more about single Ebola cases

One day, our grandchildren will wonder how we tolerated the carnage on our roads. Just as we look back with shock at the life expectancy and infant mortality rates of a hundred years ago, so will our descendants blanch at the number of fatal vehicle collisions every year in our time.

We put so much effort into safety and wellness. When a workplace accident causes a premature death, there are often inquiries and inquests. And yet every day of the year, about five people die in traffic incidents in Canada. A significant number of these tragedies are preventable. And yet we do almost nothing about it.

In the time we lost 158 lives fighting in Afghanistan, about 27,000 Canadians died on our roads. Both totals are worthy of significant concern and attention, but the smaller number is much more familiar to us than the larger. Fatal collisions happen so often they have become routine; unless they affect us directly, we pay attention mostly to find out how they affect traffic.

If so many people were dying of a rampaging illness, there would be foundations and fundraisers launched to stamp it out. Yet beyond the noble efforts of groups like MADD, we barely ever talk about tackling road deaths.

The number of fatalities has declined over the past 20 years; that might be interpreted as progress, but we’re still losing 2,000 Canadians a year to vehicle collisions, so the job is hardly complete. And much of the drop is due to safer and more protective vehicles, meaning many of the causes persist unabated.

We’ve gone to extremes to ban second-hand smoke as an avoidable threat, but have done little about dangerous driving. The Ontario Provincial Police revealed this week that of 265 fatal crashes on roads they patrolled last year, 87 per cent were in one of four categories that authorities consider preventable. The stats were forgotten almost as soon as they were reported.

Part of the problem is that we all think we’re great drivers, capable of operating an enormous piece of machinery safely while also conducting business, communicating with friends and searching our devices for a decent restaurant. Collisions happen to other people, not to us. Strangely, we don’t seem to care that even if we’re fantastic drivers, we might be sharing the road with someone who isn’t.

Meanwhile, we worry incessantly about far smaller dangers. People panic when they hear about one Ebola case in North America, then hop in their cars and accelerate to 120 kilometres per hour, never looking away from their smart phones for more than 30 seconds. They worry about being hit by a stray gang bullet in Ottawa or becoming the victim of a terrorist attack, but think nothing of hurtling down a stretch of road where only hours earlier a fatal collision has occurred.

Our disproportionate perception of risk is one of the great human failings of our time. While we bubble-wrap our kids, we pay lip service to distracted driving, with moderate penalties and awareness campaigns. We’ve made some progress on drinking and driving, but it’s taken almost a generation to change the prevailing mentality. And it still happens far too often.

Our collective approach is to put more faith in the individual, as though everyone simply can be persuaded to drive more safely. We seem to think that if we just tell people texting and driving is not safe, they’ll choose to stop.

So far, it’s not working. To the extent that such measures have had any effect, it’s been a bucket of water on a raging house fire. You can’t stop a drug addiction with an awareness campaign, nor can you end our compulsive texting and calling by extolling the merits of leaving the phone alone. The cars and bodies keep piling up.

Someday, none of this will matter. Technology will replace the least reliable part of the car, the human driver. In the meantime, thousands more will die needlessly, unless we take more drastic action to strictly enforce, rather than encourage, safe behaviour.