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29 December 2014 | (Click
here for 30 Dec. printed version) WSJ site version (you may require subscription) at http://www.wsj.com/articles/traffic-deaths-and-driver-behavior-letters-to-the-editor-1419894746 |
LETTERS
Dec. 29, 2014 6:12 p.m. ET
The headline “Safety
Gains in Newer Cars Cut Traffic Fatalities” (page
one, Dec. 20) may be literally correct, but it conveys a grand falsehood. Eighty
years of scientific research show that policies addressing how people drive have
an effect on safety that overwhelms technological details.
U.S. traffic
deaths have declined since 1972 by 41%. This might seem impressive. However,
deaths in the Netherlands declined by 81% in the same period. If U.S. deaths had
declined by 81%, we would be killing 22,000 fewer Americans on our roads each
year. Vehicle improvements in all motorized countries have been similar. We are
killing the additional 22,000 because of our aggressive denial of the science
that shows that vehicle factors, while important, aren’t as important as road
factors, which aren’t nearly as important as driver-behavior factors.
The U.S.
driving population is fed a diet of misinformation that vehicle factors are
crucial. Examples are the massive attention given to defects in Toyota and GM
vehicles. It is alleged that these defects played some role in fewer than 100
deaths in a decade. In the same decade more than 450,000 people, including more
than 8,000 children under 8, were killed in U.S. traffic. Overwhelmingly, their
deaths had nothing to do with technology, defective or otherwise. The 450,000
deaths should be the focus of public concern, not the few that generate
litigation earnings.
Leonard Evans
Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
