Traffic (59 page)

guide, it will not: Nick Bunkley, “Electronic Stability Control Could Cut Fatal Highway Crashes by 10,000,”
New York Times,
April 6, 2007. One key difference to note with ESC versus ABS is that ESC functions on its own—it does not need to be used “correctly,” as in the case of ABS.

railroad safety improvements: Charles Francis Adams, in his 1879 book
Notes on Railroad Accidents,
wrote: “It is a favorite argument with those who oppose the introduction of some of these improvements, or who make excuses for want of them, that their servants are apt to become more careless from the use of them, in consequence of the extra security which they are believed to afford; and it is desirable to consider how much truth there is in this assertion.” As it happens, Adams did not subscribe to this early offset hypothesis: “The risk is proved by experience to be very much greater without them than with them; and, in fact, the negligence and mistakes of servants are found to occur most frequently, and generally with the most serious results, not when the men are over-confident in their appliances or apparatus, but when, in the absence of them, they are habituated to risk in the conduct of the traffic.” Interestingly, though, in a passage that still applies today, he noted that accidents at grade crossings, then as now, seemed to happen under what would be presumed to be the least likely, or “safest,” of conditions: “The full average of accidents of the worst description appear to have occurred under the most ordinary conditions of weather, and usually in the most unanticipated way. This is peculiarly true of accidents at highway grade crossings. These commonly occur when the conditions are such as to cause the highway travelers to suppose that, if any danger existed, they could not but be aware of it.” From Charles Francis Adams,
Notes on Railroad Accidents
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1879).

“the highway death rate”: Sam Peltzman, “The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation,”
Journal of Political Economy,
vol. 83, no. 4 (August 1976), pp. 677–726.

reason to feel less safe: Decades later, people are still sifting through the data, trying to refute or defend Peltzman’s hypothesis. He has been questioned for, among other things, including motorcyclists in his count of nonoccupant fatalities—that is, along with pedestrians and cyclists—as if they were a similar beast. (Annual motorcycle registrations were also growing, it has been argued, and many motorcyclists, in any case, die in single-vehicle crashes, which are presumably not the result of car drivers acting more aggressively.) See, for example, Leon S. Robertson, “A Critical Analysis of Peltzman’s ‘The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation,’”
Journal of Economic Issues,
vol. 2, no. 3 (September 1977), pp. 587–600. Others have suggested that people may not have been driving more aggressively but simply
more
—driving more in the newer cars because they felt safer (arguably a form of behavioral adaptation itself). See Robert B. Noland, “Traffic Fatalities and Injuries: Are Reductions the Result of ‘Improvements’ in Highway Design Standards?,” paper submitted to Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, November 10, 2000. A study by a pair of Harvard economists that paid specific attention to how many people were actually using seat belts (again, something that can only be guessed at) found no evidence for a Peltzman effect. The authors did, however, conclude that fatalities had not dropped by nearly as much as government regulators had predicted. See Alma Cohen and Liran Einav, “The Effects of Mandatory Seat Belt Laws on Driving Behavior and Traffic Fatalities,” Discussion Paper No. 341, Harvard Law School, November 2001; downloaded on February 12, 2007, from
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/
. Peltzman was also criticized for not separating, or “disaggregating,” the regulated vehicles from the nonregulated vehicles (to see, for example, if the cars with safety upgrades were overrepresented in fatal pedestrian crashes). This argument was made by Leon Robertson and Barry Pless, “Does Risk Homeostasis Theory Have Implications for Road Safety,”
British Medical Journal,
vol. 324 (May 11, 2002), pp. 1151–52.

to be riskier drivers: This point is made explicit in the discussion of the fictional Fred earlier in the chapter, but see, too, P. A. Koushki, S. Y. Ali, and O. AlSaleh, “Road Traffic Violations and Seat Belt Use in Kuwait: Study of Driver Behavior in Motion,”
Transportation Research Record,
vol. 1640 (1998), pp. 17–22; see also T. B. Dinh-Zarr, D. A. Sleet, R. A. Shults, S. Zaza, R. W. Elder, J. L. Nichols, R. S. Thompson, and D. M. Sosin, “Reviews of Evidence Regarding Interventions to Increase the Use of Safety Belts,”
American Journal of Preventive Medicine,
vol. 21, no. 4, Supp. 1 (2001), pp. 48–65, and D. F. Preusser, A. F. Williams, and A. K. Lund, “The Effect of New York’s Seat Belt Use Law on Teenage Drivers,”
Accident Analysis & Prevention,
vol. 19 (1987), pp. 73–80.

not wearing their belts: Evans,
Traffic Safety,
op. cit., p. 89.

“frequently get into accidents”: Russell S. Sobel and Todd M. Nesbit, “Automobile Safety Regulation and the Incentive to Drive Recklessly: Evidence from NASCAR,”
Southern Economic Journal,
vol. 74, no. 1 (2007).

suits and helmets: This point is made by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt in “How Many Lives Did Dale Earnhardt Save?”
New York Times,
February 19, 2006. They note that if NASCAR drivers had died at the same rate as American drivers in general in a five-year period, fifteen drivers should have died—instead, none did. This raises the interesting point that Earnhardt’s death became something of a spur for greater safety on NASCAR racetracks, where no single death in the general population of drivers seems capable of prompting a similar response.

fatalities by some 25 percent: A. J. McLean, B. N. Fildes, C. J. Kloeden, K. H. Digges, R. W. G. Anderson, V. M. Moore, and D. A. Simpson, “Prevention of Head Injuries to Car Occupants: An Investigation of Interior Padding Options,” Federal Office of Road Safety, Report CR 160, NHMRC Road Accident Research Unit, University of Adelaide and Monash University Accident Research Centre.

seat belts and air bags: Sam Peltzman, “Regulation and the Natural Progress of Opulence,” lecture presented at the American Enterprise Institute, September 8, 2004, AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, Washington, D.C.

Simpson has suggested: Joe Simpson, writing about “super-share ice screws” and other technological innovations, notes that “one would have thought these welcome developments would have made the sport considerably safer. Unfortunately climbers now throw themselves onto ice climbs that would have been unheard-of only a decade ago.” He then draws a comparison to his car, a “rust bucket of a Mini” that “left you with no illusions as to what a small cube of twisted metal it could instantly become if you hit anything.” As a result, he writes, “I drove with a modicum of caution.” From
The Beckoning Silence
(Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2006), p. 105.

for more “safety”: The Mount McKinley information comes from a fascinating study by R. Clark and Dwight R. Lee, “Too Safe to Be Safe: Some Implications of Short- and Long-Run Rescue Laffer Curves,”
Eastern Economic Journal,
vol. 23, no. 2 (Spring 1997), pp. 127–37. It is true that many more people were climbing the mountain by the century’s end, but it is also true that many more climbers were needing to be rescued. In 1976 alone, the study notes, there were thirty-three rescues, one out of every eighteen climbs—almost as many as the total number prior to 1970.

no-pull fatality: Vic Napier, Donald Self, and Carolyn Findlay, “Risk Homeostasis: A Case Study of the Adoption of a Safety Innovation on the Level of Perceived Risk,” paper submitted to the American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences meeting, Las Vegas, February 22, 2007.

our willingness for risk: O. Adebisi and G. N. Sama, “Influence of Stopped Delay on Driver Gap Acceptance Behavior,”
Journal of Transportation Engineering,
vol. 3, no. 115 (1989), pp. 305–15.

fatal crashes goes
down:
Daniel Eisenberg and Kenneth E. Warner, “Effects of Snowfalls on Motor Vehicle Collisions, Injuries, and Fatalities,”
American Journal of Public Health,
vol. 95, no. 1 (January 2005), pp. 120–24.

perfect risk “temperature”: Robertson and Pless, “Does Risk Homeostasis Theory Have Implications for Road Safety,” op. cit.

the lookout for cars: For a Palo Alto report, see Alan Wachtel and Diana Lewiston, “Risk Factors for Bicycle-Motor Vehicle Collisions at Intersections,”
ITE Journal,
September 1994. See also L. Aultmann-Hall and M. F. Adams. “Sidewalk Bicycling Safety Issues,”
Transportation Research Record,
no. 1636, 1998, pp. 71–76. For a fascinating and in-depth discussion of bicycle risk and safety issues, see Jeffrey A. Hiles, “Listening to Bike Lanes,” September 1996; retrieved on November 14, 2006, at
http://www.wright.edu/~jeffrey.hiles/essays/listening/contents.htm
.

than those without them): See, for example, Lasse Fridstrom, “The Safety Effect of Studded Tyres in Norwegian Cities,”
Nordic Road and Transport Research,
no. 1 (2001), as well as Veli-Pekka Kallberg, H. Kanner, T. Makinen, and M. Roine, “Estimation of Effects of Reduced Salting and Decreased Use of Studded Tires on Road Accidents in Winter,”
Transportation Research Record,
vol. 1533 (1995).

drivers of larger cars: Paul Wasielewski and Leonard Evans, “Do Drivers of Small Cars Take Less Risk in Everyday Driving?,”
Risk Analysis,
vol. 5, no. 1 (1985), pp. 25–32.

higher speeds and more lanes: D. Walton and J. A. Thomas, “Naturalistic Observations of Driver Hand Positions,”
Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behavior,
vol. 8 (2005), pp. 229–38.

lower feelings of risk: D. Walton and A. Thomas, “Measuring Perceived Risk: Self-reported and Actual Hand Positions of SUV and Car Drivers,”
Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour,
vol. 10, issue 3 (May 2007).

talking on a cell phone: Lesley Walker, Jonathan Williams, and Konrad Jamrozik, “Unsafe Driving Behaviour and Four Wheel Drive Vehicles: Observational Study,”
British Medical Journal,
vol. 333, issue 17558 (July 8, 2006), p. 71.

“car in front”: Sten Fossser and Peter Christensen, “Car Age and the Risk of Accidents,” TOI Report 386, Institute of Transport Economics, Norway, 1998.

more than old cars: This was suggested to me in a conversation with Kim Hazelbaker, senior vice president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, May 19, 2007.

drive it more often: When I asked Leonard Evans, one of the leading authorities on traffic safety in the United States, what kind of car he drove, his answer made an impression on me. “In terms of a certain mind-set I drive a very unsafe car,” he said. “It’s about the least expensive, lightest car that my former employer manufactured: the Pontiac Sunfire.” It is well over a decade old.

and
killed in war: Shaoni Bhattacharya, “Global Suicide Toll Exceeds War and Murder,”
New Scientist,
September 8, 2004.

struck by lightning: John Mueller, “A False Sense of Insecurity,”
Regulation,
vol. 27, no. 3 (Fall 2004), pp. 42–46.

stricter cell phone laws): Frank McKenna, a professor of psychology at the University of Reading, points out that people have commonly resisted previous traffic and other health safety measures, ranging from wearing seat belts to restricting workplace smoking, on the grounds that they impinge upon “freedoms.” There is also, in public policy, a tendency to avoid legislating behaviors that do not violate John Stuart Mill’s “harm principle”—that is, this thinking maintains that laws should be passed only to “prevent harm to others,” not for the “physical or moral” good of any individual. As McKenna argues, even though drunk driving and not wearing seat belts were once considered legitimate behavior, the social costs of these behaviors, as with workplace smoking, were eventually recognized. This raises the question, however, of why speeding, which can cause “harm to others,” is so widely tolerated. It may be that, as has been argued in this book, people are often simply not aware of their speed, or of the potential risks they are assuming in driving at a high speed. This may help contribute to a perceived lack of “legitimacy” on the part of authorities in trying to mount stricter enforcement campaigns. Police are faced with a well-known quandary: Be too lenient in enforcing strict speed limits, and drivers’ speeds will creep up; be too strict, and “they risk strain on public acceptability.” McKenna concludes that the current public acceptance of regularly driving above speed limits may at some point look as retrograde as workplace smoking: “It is noted that the perceived legitimacy of action can change considerably over time and interventions that would not be perceived as legitimate at one point in time may be considered uncontroversial at a later point in time.” See Frank P. McKenna, “The Perceived Legitimacy of Intervention: A Key Feature for Road Safety,” AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 2007.

drive rather than fly: “Consequences for Road Traffic Fatalities of the Reduction in Flying Following September 11, 2001,” Michael Sivak and Michael Flannagan,
Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behavior,
vol. 7, nos. 4–5 (July–September 2004), pp. 301–05.

assigned to counterterrorism: Carl Ingram, “CHP May Get to Hire 270 Officers,”
Los Angeles Times,
June 2, 2004, p. B1. In the article, one police officer points out that Timothy McVeigh was caught on a “routine traffic stop.” Eerily enough, Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the September 11 participants, was ticketed once for speeding and once for driving without a license; the license he finally got was suspended when he failed to appear in court.

raising speed limits: Elihu D. Richter, Lee S. Friedman, Tamar Berman, and Avraham Rivkind, “Death and Injury from Motor Vehicle Crashes: A Tale of Two Countries,”
American Journal of Preventative Medicine,
vol. 29, no. 5 (2005), pp. 440–50. The authors implicate several other differences, including the steep rise in ownership of SUVs and other light trucks in the United States in the 1990s, as well as higher rates of driving under the influence of alcohol.