What is Traffic Safety?

What does "traffic safety" mean? The answers you get depend on who you ask. Those who think big government knows best define traffic safety as manufacturing safer cars, implementing nationwide seat belt laws, and designing better highways. Sounds reasonable. Yet, we already have safer cars than ever before, states across the U.S. are passing and enforcing seat belt laws, and highways are improving. Why then do we have a steady annual death rate from traffic accidents of more than 40,000 men, women, and children? And, why do we have a horrific toll of accident survivors in the millions if a top down, big government approach is working? The answer: it's not.

Safer cars and highways are not enough. They give a false sense of security. The reason that the death rates haven't improved is that more people are driving too fast for the conditions on the road. Speed itself is not the problem; inappropriate speed is. Bad drivers cause the majority of traffic accidents. You can have the best cars and highways in the world, but reckless drivers--those who speed beyond any reasonable criteria, those who zoom in and out of lanes as if they are driving in a video game--will continue to turn driving into a stressful battlefield.

So what will reverse this deadly trend? What will work is a two-pronged approach: 1) Reward good drivers, and 2) Crack down on bad drivers. The carrot and the stick. Reward the good and punish the bad. That's what will make "traffic safety" a reality. Future posts will consider ways to do this.

Traffic safety is the process of creating a climate of law and order on the road. Not a police state, but a consistent and rational process of ensuring that people can travel from point A to point B without fearing for their lives.