Prefaced my posting with:
- 3 items: Speed, Seat belts,drunk driving
Have been the major source of traffic deaths forever!
I reviewed a recent book on Nader and the 1960's safety hearings and auto safety...some things never change!
- The fixation with a dial is a distraction from reality. Such a shame the quest for blame stops helping the majority of people who thought they were being safe when surprise events unfolded around them leading them to having an accident.
So much easier to use herd mentality to point fingers and confirm biases than to actually help people become safer.
- A Dial?
Not sure what you mean? You mean dial in a cause as in trying to determine the MAJOR REASONS for crashes since at least the 1960s?
DUI, speeding, Seat Belts and now more than ever major causes.
Currently DISTRACTED DRIVING is an added challenge to highway and vehicle safety
You suggest education?
We have done a lot of research in highway safety for FHWA and NHTSA and others trying to make roads safer. And in one contract on low shoulders i suggested Education (simply training drivers to slow and pull away from the shoulder to avoid the low shoulder slingshot effect)
But education is not considered a solution.
It can help.
However, finding out the major causes of crashes and injuries and trying to build safer vehicles and roadways is the most direct approach.
Education can help people slow down, drive safer BUT they will not all obey...- throw emotions into the driving task,
- throw talking or texting on the phone and
- not paying attention to the driving task.
You can't train people to PAY ATTENTION and SLOW DOWN, and how to react in a possible crash situation.
You can try
but...
One research contract we did resulted in a report Effects of Speed on Accident Frequency? by RARU (now CASR) in Australia was the effects of speeding (ONLY investigated crashes with no DUI etc) and w/r to injuries in crashes and they found 10Kph over the speed limit is as lethal as DUI!.
Has anyone listened? Have they increased the penalties for speeding to reflect that?
No
Education is important and essential however you can't train ALL the people to slow down, pay attention and not drink and drive.
and Look at the push back in the US against red light cameras
And have yet to see many speed cameras.
Penalizing THE CAR apparently gets some people up in arms (having to pay for speeding!)
We need to ENFORCE Speed laws and red light running!