Cars, Safety and flying... some potent statistics
Subscribing to a number of news lists
occasionally yields some very useful data...
I subscribe to the Health Behavior News
Service, whose editor is Kristina Campbell. Every week or so, I receive an email
which brings together interesting tidbits of information. Some I file away for
potential use in the future, others have immediate impact. The service is
available to those working in the media, and I
qualify.
The current email I received
for May is entitled, "Facts of Life: On the Road to Improving Traffic Safety"
and brings together a panoply of research into driver behaviour.
It has direct relevance to the issue
of feeling safer and more in control when driving versus being a passenger
feeling out of control on a plane.
It's
rather long but worth the space. Here it is, with the proviso that do what you
can to make your driving experience as safe and predictable as you can. It is
not intended to encourage you to be more fearful about the world out
there.
On the Road to
Improving Traffic Safety
In 2002,
42,815 people died and 3 million were injured in more than 6 million crashes on
American roads, streets and highways, at a cost of more than $230 billion. This
may seem a huge toll, but the number of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles
has actually declined steadily for 10 years and is now at an all-time low. [1]
Nevertheless, a focus on driver factors can reduce deaths and injuries even
more.
Dangers of Aging
Drivers?
Some functional abilities
involved in driving, like vision, reaction and cognitive processing times,
decline with age, but older people are generally underrepresented in crashes.
However, they are more likely to die in a crash than the middle-aged because
they are frailer and suffer more chest injuries and medical complications. [2]
Screening and education may help older drivers and their families.
Across-the-board restrictions on all old drivers are inappropriate, says Jane
Stutts, Ph.D., associate director of the University of North Carolina Highway
Safety Research Center. “Regardless of age, what counts is that
driver’s individual capabilities.”
[3]
Behavioral
Issues
There’s no one culprit
making the roads dangerous. The refrain may be familiar, but much of the death
and injury from automobile crashes is still attributable to lack of seat belt
use, alcohol and driver drowsiness and
distraction.
* *
*
The
Facts:
* Traffic crashes are the
leading cause of workplace deaths, accounting for 1,347 (23.5 percent) of
civilian worker deaths in 2000, according to the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health. More than half of these victims were not wearing
seat belts at the time of the crash.
[13]
* Worldwide, 1.26 million people
worldwide died as a result of road traffic injuries in 2000. The economic cost
of road traffic injuries is $518 billion per year, according to the World Health
Organization.[8]
* Roadway fatalities
increase when speed limits are raised. States that raised limits to 75 mph in
1995-96 recorded 38 percent more deaths than states that didn’t change
their limits. Meanwhile, automakers have increased the average horsepower of new
cars by 65 percent since 1980. [9]
*
Traffic calming measures—speed humps, raised crosswalks, road narrowing
and traffic circles — reduce speed and injuries.
[5]
* Alcohol involvement in fatal
crashes fell from 47 percent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2002.
[6]
* Only 75 percent of drivers wear
seatbelts. In fatal crashes, 30 percent of occupants not wearing seatbelts are
ejected from the car and 73 percent of them are killed. But only 1 percent of
occupants wearing seatbelts are ejected in crashes. [11,
14]
* Children should graduate from
child safety seats to belt-positioning booster seats at 40 pounds and use them
until they are 4 feet, 9 inches tall. Booster seat use reduced injuries to
children by 59 percent compared to seat belts alone.
[12]
* Teenagers drive less than all
but the very oldest drivers, but their numbers of crashes and crash deaths are
disproportionately high, largely because of young drivers’ immaturity
combined with driving inexperience. Sixty-one percent of teenage passenger
deaths in 2002 occurred when another teenager was driving.
[10]
* An analysis of randomized
controlled trials found that driver education courses led to earlier licensing
but not to a reduction in road crashes. A similar analysis found no benefit to
post-licensing driver education. [7]
*
Given that “most injuries and their precipitating events are predictable
and preventable,” the British Medical Journal decided to ban the word
“accident.” The journal editors say that “crash” is a
statement of fact while “accident” draws a conclusion about cause.
[4]
* *
*
In the Driver’s
Seat
Driver behavior factors such as
seat belt use, getting distracted and driving under the influence of alcohol or
while tired play a big part in motor vehicle
safety.
Overall seat belt use rose to
75 percent nationwide by 2002. Each year, 7,000 lives could be saved if all
passengers wore seat belts all the time, says Bella Dinh-Zarr, Ph.D., M.P.H.,
director of traffic safety policy at AAA. “Most people fail to buckle up
because they forget or think it’s inconvenient just for a quick trip to
the store.”
Most seat belt laws
apply only to front-seat passengers. However, when back-seat passengers
don’t use seat belts, they not only endanger themselves but can increase
risk of death or injury to front seat passengers by 20 percent. Teenagers have
especially high crash risk but low seat belt use.
[15]
Even if they buckle up, drivers
too often let their attention wander from the road. Besides cell phones, drivers
get distracted by radios, DVD players, food, small children and even new
computerized navigation systems installed in some cars, says Mike Goodman,
Ph.D., a human engineering psychologist at the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration.
To understand
real-world driving behavior, Goodman has outfitted 100 vehicles with five
cameras, a radar system and sensors to measure braking, steering and
acceleration. The resulting data may reveal better ways to alert a driver before
crashes occur. The study is not yet complete, but Goodman says he is amazed at
the many close calls and crashes, most of which were not reported to the
police.
“These are not the kind
of things you’d think people would do if they knew they were being
filmed,” he says.
“Both
distracted driving and drowsy driving are significantly underreported, since
there’s no objective measure as there is for blood-alcohol levels,”
says Jane Stutts, Ph.D., associate director of the University of North Carolina
Highway Safety Research Center in Chapel Hill. “People do both all the
time, so they don’t think it’s
dangerous.”
Paul Rau, Ph.D., of
NHTSA, tracks drowsiness in truck drivers using an infrared sensor that tracks
when the driver’s eyelids are
closed.
“When you become drowsy,
you underestimate the passage of time,” says Rau. “Drivers are bad
estimators of their level of alertness. They’ll run off the road before
they realize how sleepy they
are.”
Despite gains during the
last decade, alcohol still accounts for up to 40 percent of fatalities each
year, Dinh-Zarr says.
“One third
of drivers arrested for [driving while intoxicated] are repeat offenders,”
she says. “And two-thirds of drunk drivers who died in crashes had 0.15
blood alcohol level, almost twice the legal limit [.08 in many states] and equal
to seven or eight beers in an
hour.”
* *
*
Expert
Sources
T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, Ph.D.,
M.P.H.
AAA National
Office
(202) 942-2050
dinhzarr@national.aaa.com
National Transportation Safety
Board
Elly
Martin
Public Information
Officer
(202)
366-9550
Elly.Martin@nhtsa.dot.gov
Judith
Lee Stone, President
Advocates for Highway
and Auto Safety
(202)
408-1711
jstone@saferoads.org
Jane
C. Stutts, Ph.D.
Highway Safety Research
Center
University of North
Carolina
(919)
962-8717
jane_stutts@unc.edu
*
*
*
References:
1.
National Center for Statistics and Analysis. Traffic Safety Facts 2002-Overview.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. DOT HS 809
612.
2. Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety:
http://www.iihs.org/safety_facts/fatality_facts/older_people.pdf
3.
American Medical Association:
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/10791.html
also:
Messinger-Rapport BJ. Assessment and counseling of older drivers. Geriatrics.
2003 Dec;58(12):16-24
4. Davis RM,
Pless B. BMJ bans “accidents”: Accidents are not unpredictable. BMJ
2001 Jun 2;322:1320-1. Also JAMA, 1999 Aug 4.
281(5)427
5. Institute of Traffic
Engineers.
http://www.ite.org/traffic/tcdevices.htm
6.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
http://www.iihs.org/safety_facts/fatality_facts/general.pdf
7.
Ker, K., Roberts, I., et al, Post-license driver education for the prevention of
road traffic crashes. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2003;(3):CD003734. Also:
Roberts I, Kwan I, et al. School based driver education for the prevention of
traffic crashes (Cochrane Review). Cochrane Library, Issue 1, 2004. Chichester,
UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
8.
United Nations General Assembly. Global road safety crisis. A/58/228. 7 August
2003. English.
http://www.unece.org/trans/roadsafe/docs/SG_report_e.pdf
9.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
http://www.iihs.org/srpdfs/sr3810.pdf
10.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
http://www.iihs.org/safety_facts/fatality_facts/teenagers.pdf
also:
http://www.cfah.org/hbns/news/license11-07-03.cfm
http://www.cfah.org/hbns/news/license12-10-03.cfm
11.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Impact of Primary Laws on Adult Use
of Safety Belts --- United States, 2002. MMWR. 2004 Apr 2;53(12):257-260
(http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5312a2.htm
also: USDOT. National Center for Statistics and Analysis: “Traffic Safety
Facts 2002” DOT HS 809 612)
12.
Durbin DR, Elliott MR, Winston FK. Belt-Positioning Booster Seats and Reduction
in Risk of Injury Among Children in Vehicle Crashes. JAMA. 2003;289:2835-2840.
Also:
www.chop.edu/carseat
and
http://www.upenn.edu/ldi/issuebrief5_9.pdf
13.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Work-Related Roadway Crashes ---
United States, 1992—2002. MMWR. 2004 Apr
2;53(12):260
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/wk/mm5312.pdf
14.
Center for Statistics and Analysis. Traffic Safety Facts 2002-Overview. National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration. DOT HS 809 612.
4
15. Williams AF. McCartt AT, Geary L.
Seatbelt use by high school students. Injury Prevention. 2003
Mar;9(1):25-28
Posted: Friday - May 28, 2004 at 11:09 AM
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