National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute researchers have done drivers a tremendous favor by taking an innovative approach to identifying the true cause of most traffic accidents. Guess what? It isn’t that old dependable devil, speed. The reality is that 8 of 10 accidents involve drivers distracted by things like talking on cell phones, applying makeup and consuming fast food.
Talking on a cell phone, for example, tripled the risk of an accident, according to the study that used in-car cameras on 241 drivers. Reaching for that dropped Egg McMuffin increased the risk nine fold. The landmark joint NHTSA/VTTI study compiled more than 43,300 hours of camera time recorded while the 241 drivers covered nearly 2 million miles on the road, making it the most exhaustive such study ever undertaken. It ought to be the starting point of some major rethinking on the part of law enforcement authorities, traffic safety analysts and automakers about how their resources are allocated on a daily basis.
The most obvious starting point for that rethinking is the priorities that govern how state troopers and local police in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia approach traffic safety. For decades, their work has been governed by the conventional wisdom that excessive speed is the biggest threat to safe travel on area roads and should thus be the primary focus of traffic enforcement. That speed enforcement also provides a steady revenue stream for local and state governments has encouraged a disproportionate focus on catching speeders.
The NHTSA/VTTI study demonstrates the flaw in this traditional emphasis on speed enforcement. Instead of sitting beside the road, radar gun in hand waiting to snare morning commuters who dare to go 72 mph instead of 55 mph, troopers and patrol officers should be actually cruising in traffic looking for distracted drivers. Spending more time in traffic would have the ancillary benefit of increasing enforcement visibility, which is a factor long thought to be among the most important in encouraging compliance with traffic laws.
At the same time, insurance companies and state officials should waste no time in adjusting their policies on the relative seriousness of traffic violations stemming from driving distracted relative to the present emphasis on excessive speed. If, as the NHTSA/VTTI study indicates, 8 out of 10 accidents involve distracted drivers, shouldn’t such violations be the basis for higher auto insurance rates and bigger penalty points, rather than the present structure that imposes more severe penalties on speeding?
There are implications in the study for automakers, too. Those multi-button instrument panels that require drivers to take their eyes off the road simply to change stations on the stereo are clearly a significant safety problem. Ditto on the proliferation of satellite navigation screens, power points for laptops and plug-ins for iPods.
The Examiner will be closely watching how officials in government and industry respond on these matters, and we encourage readers to pass along their own observations in these regards, too.
