It’s the 2011 Michigan Traffic Safety Summit at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing. Attendees today heard from traffic safety advocates from around the country, brought here to expand our knowledge about national best practices, provide acknowledgement of Michigan’s successes and give us all a morale boost to keep at it. It’s all about saving lives and reducing injuries from a daily public health danger that most individuals take completely for granted and routinely disregard the risks of.
What follows are my impressions and notes from day one of the three-day event.
Enjoy what you have, appreciate your strengths and work to achieve your goals. Understand the personal Touchstone that you return to and which gives you strength (a spouse, a location, an avocation, a symbol, a belief). Example: I have challenges and changes that bring worry and fear, but I know that my wife is there to support me and be my touchstone even when I am far away.
We can achieve our goals and should not use the daunting time that it would take as a crutch holding us back. Example: you want to finish college while working but complain that it would take until you are 45. However, how old will you be in six years if you do not work to finish college? The result will be the same: you will still be 45, but not have met your goals. The jobs we do in the pursuit of reducing deaths in injuries is not often appreciated. You are appreciated, though.
Two is now the new one when it comes to properly securing the youngest humans in a car. The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that all humans ride rear-facing in their child safety seats until at least two years of age. They should ride rear-facing until the upper rear-facing limits of their seats, but the minimum age should be two years. If you could see the crash test videos showing the stresses put on a little child’s neck, spine, head, internal organs when they are forward facing, you’d see why. The child is 75% less likely to be killed or be seriously injured if remaining rear facing. If we could tell you something today that would give you a 75% chance of reducing your child's risk of cancer you would do it in an instant.
Human’s bodies are not developed enough to withstand the forces of airbag deployment or impacting vehicle components in the front seat until they are at least 13 years old. Kids being picked up from school and placed in the front seat, often with a backpack on, are placed directly where the airbag will impact them for the greatest injury.
Seatbelts save lives, and airbags help reduce injuries. They must be used together.
The mindset for traffic safety needs to be aimed at Moving Towards Zero Deaths. If we use that as the goal it makes a much bigger difference in our thinking and planning. If instead, for example, we were to set the outrageous goal of reducing US traffic deaths by HALF in the next year we’d only kill about 20,000 people. How silly does setting a goal of killing 20,000 people sound? We need to aim for a zero goal instead of a percentage. This is a cooperative effort of all parties including local governments.
The traffic safety (or US safety culture in general) should change. Here is an example: When the US Air flight crashed into the Hudson River and saved all on board it was a huge headline that is still talked about. However, we easily dismissed the 100 people killed in traffic crashes that day. Instead we covered the 100 that didn’t get killed on the plane.
The safety culture associated with cars and their surrounding culture of speed and independent action can change, and a good example is the almost complete change in the public regard for smoking and smokers. In 30 years it has gone from a normal and pervasive aspect of American daily life to the status that it holds today. The same can happen with traffic safety if it is treated as a health issue instead of a transportation issue.
Every dollar spent on highways should be a dollar spent on safety. Ultimately, the highway is a factor in every crash. The Federal Highway Association lists the following as the primary factors contributing to fatalities: Roadway Departures including lane departures (58%), Intersections (21%), Pedestrians (11%) and Speeding (32%). Speeding does not necessarily mean exceeding the posted speed, but exceeding the speed for conditions present.
It is very hard to be killed by a traffic crash in a roundabout. The Michigan left turn has also been highly effective at reducing injuries from what is one of the most dangerous traffic maneuvers: the left turn. Rumble strips (center and curb) have helped reduce crashes no matter what distraction caused the driver to stray. Roadway planners want to make the roadway forgiving of mistakes when possible. A driving mistake should not kill you if it can be avoided by engineering.
In Michigan in 1940 there were 12 people killed by traffic crashes for every 100 million miles traveled. In 2009 that number was 0.91. Crashes in Michigan always reduced during US recessions, but that alone does not account for the huge reduction in crashes and injuries. In 1966 the Federal Highway Safety Act was passed, and since that time all aspects of traffic safety have combined to reduce deaths and serious injuries. The following are just a few:
- The car: collapsible steering wheels, tire improvements, shatter proof glass, steel beams in the doors, crumple zones, seat belts, airbags, ABS brakes.
- Highways: paved shoulders, crash cushions, breakaway signs, rumble strips, Michigan left turn, roundabouts, tree removal.
- Drivers: laws for seatbelt use, texting, graduated licensing, drug and alcohol use, speeding.
- Emergency Medical Services: cell phones, paramedics, 24-hour hospital emergency rooms, trauma departments, copter evacuation, OnStar.
- Government: state and federal agencies established to set unified traffic safety goals and strategies, and provide targeted funding.
Nationally, the emphasis on local traffic safety planning and budgeting is to take a proactive approach instead of reactive. Example: work across multiple counties to plan system-wide and low-cost countermeasures improving traffic safety over a wide area instead of reacting to a terrible crash at one single location. Rumble strips or reduction of traffic sign clutter are both good examples of this. The spillover benefit to changing one intersection only extends to the limits of that single intersection. These approaches should be data-driven.
75% of the US roadways are local roads, under the responsibility of 39,000 local governmental agencies. They are where 50% of our driving is done, but where 60% of the crashes take place. Local roadways are, therefore, over represented in crashes, but local elected officials responsible for making traffic safety decisions often have no traffic safety knowledge. There are now training programs in Michigan that have been tested and proven to be effective in arming local elected officials with knowledge to help them do two things: 1) make more informed decisions, 2) be better prepared to discuss traffic safety concerns with the public.
Discussing traffic safety measures with the pubic or as a public official is difficult due to the counterintuitive nature of traffic controls. Example: many people just think if you put up a stop sign, traffic signal or reduce the speed limit there will be fewer crashes, even though the opposite may happen. This new training helps with these concepts.
Be safe.
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