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USA TODAY
opinion piece 19
September 2014
U.S.
Traffic Safety Misleads the Public •
GM ignition switch case shows technology emphasized over driver behavior •
(at time) 13* deaths associated defective switch in ten-year period •
in same peeriod 130,522 people died in GM vehicles, including
2,641 child passengers under 8 years old •
130 thousand deaths nothing to do with technology, defective or
otherwised •
the way to really reduce harm from traffic - sensible traffic safety law
sensibly enforced *
by December 2014 reached 23 and increasing - but a
long way to approach 130 thousand. The major legitimate public concern
is that losses on our roads include 90 people killed per day. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
American
Journal of Public Health EDITORIAL August
2014
Twenty thousand more Americans killed annually because US traffic-safety policy rejects science
•
I Explain finding in the same AJPH issue that if US fatalities declined
by the same percent as in 7 normal countries, 20, 000 fewer
Americans would be killed each year
•
My explanation flows from a more than four-decade career devoted to the science of traffic
safety and draws upon perspectives gained from growing into adulthood outside the
US
• In early 1970s the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sponsored a
major study that identified the road user as sole or contributing factor in 94% of
crashes; the vehicle was the sole contributor in 2%, the same percent found in a British
study.
•
US policy not Random, but topsy-turvy, placing most emphasis on
what their own and copious other research confirms to be the least
important factor, vehicles, leaving little energy for the most important
factor, drivers
•
NHTSA contributes to innundating the public with toxic misinformation
which increases fatalities
•
Example - Toyota phantom acceleration - allegation that, in a decade, 19
deaths were associated with this defect, while ignoring 22, 574 people killed traveling in Toyotas
vehicles - almost none of these deaths had anything to do with vehicle
technology - defective or otherwise.
•
Plaintiffs’ lawyers likely pocket more than a billion dollars from
this defect. Settlement details are kept secret—yet another example of “damn the public interest” in favor of lawyers’ interests.
•
They contribute a percentage of the loot to the lawyer-legislators who
create this system.
•
The problem is not so much the lawyers doing lawyering, but the lawyer
legislators making laws that benefit themselves but plunder and kill
their constituents
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