Cities were the topic of a recent speech by Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of the Department of Transportation (DOT). The overall charter of the DOT is to promote safety in our transportation systems. Mostly, we see information about airline safety and hear information about promoting more major rail transportation. But in Pete’s speech, he highlighted another area where there is a need for safety. He spoke about the hundreds of lives being lost in local road deaths.
Daily Traffic Deaths
I know here our news almost daily is reporting traffic fatalities. Nationally, these numbers are astronomical, when compared to airline deaths. It is really safer to fly than it is to get into our automobile and drive to the grocery store. And, compared to gun violence, the car is even more lethal than guns.
Secretary Buttigieg was calling on cities to focus on this information. There are many things being done on the local level to try to make streets safer, but that alone won’t accomplish lowering this terrible trend. Adding bike lanes and widening some streets are just bandaids.
There is still the human factor. As long as people are behind the wheel, accidents can and do happen. Quite often it is due to impaired drivers – alcohol and/or drugs. Just this past week there was a fatality on one of our freeways caused by an impaired driver driving in the wrong direction.
Suggested Solutions for Cities
One way to stop this type of accident from occurring would be to put those stop spike barriers at the entrances. I am talking about those spikes that slash your tires if you run over them in a parking lot or other places. Yes, this would be costly, and there is controversy in doing it because it would impair rapid response to emergency vehicles, but if there were no accidents, we wouldn’t need those vehicles entering that way.
Also, there are devices that can be installed into vehicles to keep them from operating if the driver is impaired. We have incurred the expense of seat belts and airbags in all vehicles for safety, so why not this? I know they would be unnecessary for most people, but aren’t airbags equally unnecessary most of the time? If an airbag can save a life, why not a breathalyzer device to save it too?
But there also seems to be one category of driver for which I can’t suggest a fix. Joyriders and speeders, which mostly seem to be teens or young adults. What is the solution there? Somehow we have to impress them with the fact that they are going to be driving a lethal weapon. Sadly, many of the victims of this type of accident are friends and family of the young driver, I don’t think parents alone can stress this strongly enough to these young drivers.
Conclusion
This page is just meant to prompt local discussion and thought. But this is a bigger problem than I originally thought when initially hearing that speech. One number, I saw was 44,000 annual highway deaths in the United States. If we saw that kind of number with airlines, people would be hollering. It’s time for us to start hollering about this now. Stop the Slaughter on our Streets.
#DOT #trafficfatalities #lethalweapon