|
... of Automobiles
May 5 /2007:
Governing auto safety
What is it about chief executives of New Jersey?
First came Woodrow Wilson:
November 11, 1912, New York Times
... and now Governor John Corzine.'s bone-headed
commensuration with Wilson and history:
N.J. Governor Is Critical After Car Crash
CAMDEN, N.J., April 13 — Gov. Jon S. Corzine remained on a ventilator and was
heavily sedated for pain today as he recovered in the hospital following a car
accident Thursday in which it appears he was not wearing a seat belt, his
spokesman and a doctor said.
Last August I posted a discussion of the impact
of the 1960s and 1970s Highway Safety regime's misguided focus on automobile
design over driver usage (Safe at all
costs). The emphasis on design came of various fetishes of the period,
especially that of the Naderite infatuation with "consumer protection" against
corporations coupled with the discovery by the nation's trial attorneys of new
legal avenues for liability lottos through class action suits and so-called
"secondary impact" theories that placed blamed auto manufacturers for all
injuries from accidents, regardless of cause or driver error.
The movement's victory came in the new Federal
establishment of consumer safety regulatory agencies, including the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA).
Among the agencies first programs was to impose "passive restraint" upon
manufacturers and consumers. The idea was to substitute in design what consumers
refused to choose for themselves, safety belts. As I argue in
Safe at all costs, this emphasis on
"passive" over "active" safety cost tens of thousands of lives as highway safety
advocacy moved away from user responsibility to blame on design.
Now following Corzine's accident, auto safety is
in the news again. Amazingly, the emphasis has little to do with seatbelt use:
that's something for which Corzine will have to apologize and adjust himself to
State law. Instead the news is about politics and governors who get into trouble
with cars and speeding tickets and accidents (see, for example,
Fast-Tracked for Passage: Politicos on the Road).
I suppose that's normal and fun, but it's a good
moment for the public to get a sense for what the "safe design" cost Governor
Corzine, and nearly to the point of total bankruptcy. Am I wrong to suggest that
he didn't feel the need for a seat belt because of airbags?
Washington Post automotive writer Warren
Brown correctly points to fallacies over seatbelt use that continue to misguide
public perception and public policy:
Playing Seat-Belt Roulette
There is something else. Many SUV critics are fond of pointing to the relatively
high rate of roll-over fatalities in SUV crashes. Any vehicle rolling on its top
or its side is a health threat to its occupants. But the SUV critics usually
fail to point out that the majority of SUV roll-over deaths -- an estimated 62
percent, according to NHTSA -- are attributable to failure to wear easily
accessible seat belts.
Read it again: 62% of SUV rollover deaths are
from the failure to ware safety belts! Thank you, Warren, for the truth
for a change.
Meanwhile, NHTSA, from whom that statistic
comes, continues to blame design:
II. Prevent and Mitigate Rollover Crashes
NHTSA’s crash avoidance vehicle safety standards mandate improvements in the
crash-avoidance capabilities of vehicles to reduce the likelihood of
collisions. The improvements may enhance the interaction of the driver with
the vehicle; deliver more effective warnings to drivers about impending
crashes; improve the driver’s ability to avoid crashes and maintain control of
the vehicle; or enhance driver vision through improvements in current systems
or advanced technologies. The Agency focuses its crash avoidance rulemaking
activities on reducing the number of collisions through improvements in direct
and indirect visibility, tires, braking, directional and rollover stability,
vehicle lighting, signaling, and marking.
Where safety belts are mentioned in this NHTSA
report, their role is understated and the responsibility is, as ever, placed
upon the manufacturer:
5. Safety Belt Use Reminders
In 2002 and 2003, NHTSA sent letters to all the major vehicle manufacturers
encouraging the installation of enhanced safety belt reminder systems. NHTSA
also requested information on the types of technologies they intended to use,
the appropriate time frame for installation and any customer feedback on their
systems that they would be willing to share with the Agency. Based on the
feedback received, NHTSA has developed a research plan to investigate these
technologies. In 2004, the NAS’s Transportation Research Board also completed
a study, "Buckling Up, Technologies to Increase Seat Belt Use," Special Report
278.
And when belts are analyzed for effectiveness in
rollovers, a large problem noted is
Belt slack and belt stretch inherent to
some current lap/shoulder safety belt systems may fail to sufficiently
restrain occupants from contacting the undeformed roof during a rollover
crash.
Ahem: those "designs," I suspect, are those
meant to accommodate NHTSA rules on passive restraints, such as "automatic"
seatbelt systems that have only "two-point" restraints (these are found mostly
on pre-airbag cars, of which hundreds of thousands are on the road, including
mine...).
For whatever good NHTSA can bring to seatbelt
use, the public and law-making debates on SUVs and the horrors of "rollovers"
concentrates on vehicle design alone. Try this, for example, from the benighted
group, Public Citizen, Ralph Nader's little "advocacy" group whose contempt for
the marketplace in its campaign to hold makers and not users responsible for
traffic injuries has been a major contributor to continued non-use of seatbelts:
Rollover Crashes
Every year more than 10,000 people -- one-third of all occupant fatalities --
die in rollover crashes, although rollovers are only 4 percent of all crashes.
Despite repeated requests from safety advocates and members of Congress over
the past two decades, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has
failed to establish a standard for rollover prevention, implementing instead a
weak consumer information program.
Rollover crashes do not have to be deadly, as rollovers are among the most
survivable of all crash types. Public Citizen supports the creation of a
dynamic rollover standard, supported by mandatory crashworthiness protections,
in addition to providing consumers with effective, readily available
vehicle-specific information at the point-of-sale.
This year, the House and Senate will consider the Surface Transportation
Reauthorization Act of 2003 (TEA-3) which includes a provision for the
development of a rollover crashworthiness standard as well as other provisions
which could help mitigate the harm of rollover crashes. Click here to visit
our TEA-3 page.
Did you see it? I didn't: not a word in there
about seat belts.
Meanwhile, here's a 2006 AP article on
driver behavior as the largest contributor to highway accidents:
Study: Distractions Cause Most Car Crashes
By KEN THOMAS
Friday, April 21, 2006
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Those sleep-deprived, multitasking drivers _ clutching cell
phones, fiddling with their radios or applying lipstick _ apparently are
involved in an awful lot of crashes.
Distracted drivers were involved in nearly eight out of 10 collisions or
near-crashes, says a study released Thursday by the government.
Researchers reviewed thousands of hours of video and data from sensor monitors
linked to more than 200 drivers, and pinpointed examples of what keeps drivers
from paying close attention to the road. "We see people on the roadways
talking on the phone, checking their stocks, checking scores, fussing with
their MP3 players, reading e-mails, all while driving 40, 50, 60, 70 miles per
hour and sometimes even faster," said Jacqueline Glassman, acting
administrator of the government's highway safety agency.
A driver's reaching for a moving object increased the risk of a crash or
potential collision by nine times, according to researchers at the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation
Institute. They found that the risk of a crash increases almost threefold when
a driver is dialing a cell phone.
Here for previous entry
More entries: see index |
... of Automobiles