This review, addressed broadly to the medical and safety communities, describes evidence-based strategies with the potential to make progress toward a future with no traffic deaths within the framework of the Safe System Approach.
Measures to improve safety include interventions to prevent high-risk behavior by drivers and passengers, road design to reduce the risk of crashes and to physically separate vehicles from pedestrians and cyclists, manufacture of vehicles with enhanced preventive features and crashworthiness, enforcement of safer traffic speeds, and improvements to postcrash medical care.
I know stating this got me suspended once, but it wasn’t meant personally toward anyone:
Start driving at or below posted speed limits as much as possible.
Move up your departure time from home to school, work, the store, church, wherever, by just 5 - 10 minutes, and drive 50-55mph in a 55, or 60 in a 65, traffic permitting.
30mph on a 30 road, instead of 40-45.
It’s contagious if we all do it!
I’m willing to risk additional discipline for stating the above, but as God Himself said, being correct in this world would be challenging.
Paying attention to your driving full time, and not driving drunk,drugged or tired would probably eliminate 2/3 of our fatalities.
Not driving stupid would eliminate the rest.
Things I see every day while driving.
Making a right on red with traffic coming.
Turning into the wrong lane from entering a road orfrom off street. More people choose the wrong lane that the right one/ If it is a 3 lane road, the correct lane is the LEAST chosen.
Entering intersections long after the red light has come on.
Running stop signs without even slowing down.
Driving with your high beams on and blinding oncoming traffic.
A nearby road is 3 lanes in each direction. I have seen people jump the light from the center lane to make right or left turns in front of the car alongside of them.
I do not see any tickets given for this behavior, most of which I see much more dangerout that 10 mph over speed limits that are set not by road designers or traffic engineers, but by politicians.
Everybody wants a low speed limit in front of THEIR house.
Well, I, for one, am not advocating for higher or lower posted speed limits.
I’m advocating, and trying to demonstrate, adherence to existing posted speed limits, whatever they presently are.
Those who want to see speed limits raised or lowered have appropriate channels to address such concerns.
Consistently driving 10-15mph over whatever is posted on those signs, creating a hazardous driving environment for us law-abiders as well as for innocent pedestrians nearby, is not an appropriate way to address issues with existing speed limits.
Trust me, I see the following all the time, even send photos of it to law enforcement:
Drivers going the wrong way through one way intersections.
The other day, a driver exited the supermarket parking lot by going to the left of the island dividing entry into the lot from exit onto the Post Road, and turning left onto same Post Rd. where No Left Turn sign is posted. They did everything wrong, even meeting an entering driver who had to squeeze over to let the idiot by without hitting them.
No speed issues there, just pure and utter stupidity and lack of common sense. Those should have been sorted out in the home, when that driver was still a child.
The responses seem to be making a laundry list of bad driving practices. But, let’s define the problem that needs to be solved. U.S. drivers drive about 3 TRILLION miles per year, and about 40 THOUSAND are killed. That is, for each death, there are about 75 MILLION miles driven. The probability of being in a fatal accident TODAY is so low that we can’t really comprehend the danger. To me, this means that passive systems are needed that do not rely on the driver. I just read about someone trying to outrun a cop who was travelling at 150 mph for 20 miles in an area with traffic. There was an accident, but speed did not kill, and the passive airbags may have done their job. Saving lives and saving car fenders are two very different jobs.
And when that is caused by the designers of a road? Example, my city put raised medians in, leaving gaps for left turns. A median blocks the entrance to a drug store, but left a gap for traffic to turn into the exit. I have observed cars going into the exit of the parking lot.
Regarding rural roads: one source said that 70% of our driving is on rural roads. If only 54% of the deaths are there, they may be safer. I would prefer to drive a quiet rural road when I compare it to the busy rural interstate that it parallels.
That isn’t happening. Do you expect it will? Can driver’s ed teach it? I suspect people learn from their parents.
I agree. The article mentions them.
Isn’t the solution to this identifying the car in such a way that they can keep track of it, arresting the driver when s/he parks? Or at least impound the car? I’ve read about tags that the cops can shoot onto a car that broadcasts its location.
There’s one of these, but the opposite, in Albuquerque: a lane for left turns into a Mallwart parking lot. It looks unsafe to me.
I avoid the interstates, like seeing the scenery and little towns.
Rough sketch of entry/exit point on Post Road to Supermarket near where I live.
Sign at bottom indicates to exit to right of concrete island. Sign at top is circled/crossed out left turn arrow, implying no left turn onto busy Post road.
Red is path of errant driver. Blue is path of driver entering plaza parking lot nearly simultaneously. I witnessed the whole thing, and thought it was a miracle they didn’t, at best, sideswipe each other at low speed.
I used this in/out point all the time, per signage, and have had no issues, except occasionally being held up by someone waiting for a break in the endless traffic to turn left where left turn is prohibited.
After enough of my horning them, and hand raised out my driver window motioning “right only!” “right only!”, most get the hint, relent, and turn right.
Avoiding the interstates is more pleasant but interstates are safer.Having said that, , when going from S Carolina to buffalo NY I cut west on a rural roas in Virginia to avoid the interstates near DC. It is a much more relaxed drive.
3 trillion is about 10,000 miles per person (not just adults) - seems high.
I can believe that: there’s more cross-traffic, Sunday drivers (does anyone say that anymore?), bad pavement. I refer to highways, not city/town streets. Do you have stats for that?
I believe that the article I read calculated an average of about 13000 miles per DRIVER. You do raise an interesting question: how does anyone get the data to calculate this, and are they really able to calculate to 5 digit accuracy?
There’s a McDonalds with an exit onto a 4 lane highway. The entrance is down a 2 lane road intersecting the main highway. For some unknown reason, people will choose to block traffic on the 4 lane road to enter their parking lot even though it is plainly marked by signs and painted arrows. It also requires a sharp turn to enter as the outlet is designed to force exiting traffic to turn right onto the main highway. To try and stop this practice, the city installed pylons blocking these left turns but people just ran over them till they broke off. You can’t overcome this stupidity with any amount of design.
+1
One of my college friends had some sort of fear about the slight rise in the grading of driveways/entryways at gas stations, fast food joints, and other establishments that you would have to enter from a highway. As a result, he would slow his car down to a walking pace when turning into one of those places.
On more than one occasion, we came very close to being T-boned when he made one of his slow-motion turns into an establishment on the other side of the road.
