Reduce Fatalities

Hello,

I was surfing, looking for traffic law information and came across your site. I thought you might be interested in reading this Sacramento BEE editorial which I wrote.
Published Feb 8, not available on_line.

By John O'Brien,
Chico California

Special to The Bee

CHICO -- Although alcohol-related traffic fatalities have declined in recent years, non-alcohol_related traffic deaths have increased. If the goal is to reduce fatalities, the statistics suggest it may be time to shift focus to the average driver, who has little training, a fogged awareness and, too often, a victim mentality, even when caught driving 90 mph in a 55 mph zone. I base these remarks on a sample of more than 10,000 students I've taught in my classes for traffic violators in the last nine years.

Three hands up is a typical response in a class of 30 after I ask how many have had any driver's education, either in a classroom or behind the wheel, since receiving their original driver's license. Typically, two of those students would have a commercial driver's license and the other student would report an earlier remedial, mandated driver-training class or, once in a while, a work-mandated defensive driving course.

Doesn't it seem odd that a minimum of 30 classroom hours and six hours behind the wheel licenses 16-year-olds? What would 36 hours do for someone who wanted to be a great basketball player or golfer or musician?

Some 42,000 people die on our roads each year. That number prompted Dr. Jeffrey Runge, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to ask Congress: "This is obscene. Where are the demonstrators?" He pointed out, as the Washington Post summed it up, (8/21/2001) that "If the president said there was a disease that killed that many people each year while putting another 400,000 in the hospital (without mentioning road accidents) the public would demand that war be declared on the malady..."

Protesters are few and there is no war on highway terror because most drivers believe that they won't get into a crash - and that if they do, it won't hurt. Most drivers rate themselves as above average in their driving and think it is a waste of time for further driver education. And besides, everybody breaks the law.

According to the California Highway Patrol's Web site, in the year 2000 3,730 persons were killed on California highways; for each fatality, 81 persons were injured. "Speed," as the CHP puts it, "was indicated as the Primary Collision Factor in 28 percent of the fatal and injury collisions."

In a typical class of 30 traffic criminals, 25 received a speeding ticket. One student laughed about getting caught doing 105 mph, but being written up for 85 mph. Students complain about being caught in speed traps when they were doing 60 mph in a 45 mph zone, or 50 mph in a 25 mph zone. Young drivers express the view that 65 mph is too slow on a two_lane rural highway, even after I demonstrate with charts and numbers that those roads are the deadliest.

The average driver fails to understand that she can die on the road, that he can kill other people, that death can come to us when we least expect it while driving a car, for instance. We should all be afraid because these drivers I teach really don't understand how their lack of awareness and training can produce a powerful amount of grief and suffering.