The U.S. Department of Transportation has a 42-page strategy for reducing and eventually eliminating traffic deaths that includes education, road design changes and technological improvements.
But U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Thursday that the biggest factor is convincing Americans that road deaths are unacceptable.
“We need a national change of mentality,” Mr. Buttigieg said at a news conference Thursday to announce the National Roadway Safety Strategy. “We’re so accustomed to hazards on our roads, we think they are inevitable. They are not.”
Last fall, after estimates for the first six months of 2021 showed the largest increase in traffic deaths since the agency began collecting statistics in 1975, Mr. Buttigieg declared a “national crisis.”
After declining for more than 30 years, traffic deaths started rising again in the past decade, especially since the start of the pandemic. That’s when reduced traffic led to an increase in speeding, and behaviors such as impaired driving, distracted driving and reduced use of seat belts caused a sharp spike in road deaths.
As a result, federal officials spent the past four months assembling the strategy announced Thursday. The program calls for a “safe system approach” to improve driver performance, design safer roads and provide better care for victims when accidents do occur.
The department will rely on more than $15 billion available through the national infrastructure program over the next five years to help pay for road improvements.
The other key, Mr. Buttigieg said, will be full buy-in from the public and safety organizations such as the Governors Highway Safety Association, the National Safety Council and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, all of which had representatives at the news conference.
“We are fully committed,” Pam Shadel Fischer, senior director of external engagement for the governors association, said in an interview after the news conference. “Now, there’s a road map we can follow going forward. Finally, we have a plan we can all rally around and national leadership to make it work.”
Changing the national view of traffic safety won’t be easy, Ms. Fischer said. It will take cooperative efforts, such as the effort of more than 50 groups that are supporting National Passenger Safety Week this week to encourage passengers speak up if drivers are engaging in risky behavior.
“That’s the hard part. We need everybody to do their part,” Ms. Fischer said. “It’s a quality-of-life issue. We need everybody to say ‘enough is enough.’ Behavior change is hard.”
Although deaths have spiked sharply since the start of the pandemic, reversing that won’t be a quick fix, Ms. Fischer said. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Based on deaths per miles driven, Canada has half as many traffic fatalities as the U.S., and Europe has only a quarter as many.
“It’s going to take time. There’s no question about it,” she said. “If we do things right — all of us pushing in the same direction — we can do it. I firmly believe that. Other countries have done it.”
Mr. Buttigieg said one way to encourage that change is for everyone to take the issue personally.
“”We can only protect our loved ones by working together,” he said. “Who knows? The life you save may be your own.”
Ed Blazina: eblazina@post-gazete.com, 412-263-1470 or on Twitter @EdBlazina.
First Published: January 27, 2022, 9:01 p.m.
