Latest additions to Science Serving Society web

*** September 2011

Auxiliary information: This Presentation is based on one I delivered to The Eye and The Auto International Conference, 2011-09-(12–14), in Detroit MI, organized by the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology. In Traffic Safety (2004), the chapter titled The Dramatic Failure of US Safety Policy concludes that US Safety policy, by rejecting science, ends up placing most emphasis on where benefits are least (JAMA reviewer calls this Chapter the Showstopper). The conclusion that disastrous US policy was killing more than ten thousand additional Americans every year was based on comparing US performance with that in three Comparison countries (Britain, Canada and Australia). This present presentation compares the US to 27* countries, and for each of them 7 years more data than available in the earlier study. The presentation shows the data for each country in a separate graph. The enormously greater amount of data adds vastly more support to the earlier conclusions. Namely, (1) US safety performance is dramatically worse than that in other industrialized countries. (2) The fatality declines among other countries are similar and define what is normal. Their policies emerge from imperfect legislative bodies whose members are much concerned about being reelected. The far from optimal policies that emerge are ordinarily foolish. (3) US policies are not ordinarily foolish. They are extraordinarily foolish. (4) This is because US safety policy continues to maximize litigation earnings and the resulting political contributions (for example, Toyota "phantom acceleration") while ignoring science, knowledge, or even common understanding. This results in placing priorities almost perfectly opposite to where safety benefits are greatest.

Countries analyzed in order of decreasing human population: 1 China 2 United States of America 3 Japan 4 Germany 5 France 6 Italy 7 Great Britain 8 South Korea 9 Spain 10 Poland 11 Canada 12 Australia 13 Netherlands 14 Greece 15 Belgium 16 Portugal 17 Czech Republic 18 Hungary 19 Sweden 20 Austria 21 Switzerland 22 Israel 23 Denmark 24 Slovakia 25 Finland 26 Norway 27 Ireland 28 New Zealand

*** May 2011

Leonard Evans Presentations to 22nd World Congress of ITMA, Chongqing, China, 13-16 May 2011 (click here for more details)

*** May 2011

Three contributions to Modern Traffic Medicine (Wang, Zhenguo ed), Chongqing Publishing House, Chongqing, China, ISBN 9787229039127, May 2011.

1. USA Traffic Safety Provides Examples Worth Copying and Worth Avoiding. (PDF)

2. A Short History of the International Traffic Medicine Association (ITMA) (PDF)

3. Preface (PDF)

Last updated 2011-10-14