Just Drive

By Debbie Hersman

Last week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued voluntary guidelines to auto manufacturers, saying they should limit the time that drivers take their eyes off the road to perform any task to two seconds at a time and twelve seconds total. The guidelines also recommend limiting the ability to text, browse the Web, watch video or view social media unless the car is in park.

At the NTSB, our investigations have long highlighted the danger and deadliness of driver distraction. So I commend NHTSA for bringing additional attention to the issue. Now, it is up to the auto manufacturers to get behind these voluntary guidelines.

After completing an investigation of an Aug. 5, 2010, highway crash in Gray Summit, Mo, where a pickup driver, who had been texting, plowed into the back of a tractor trailer and set off a series of collisions that killed two people, the NTSB issued its strongest recommendation yet to end driver distractions from portable electronic devices (PEDs). The NTSB has called on the 50 states and the District of Columbia to ban the nonemergency use of PEDs (other than those designed to support the driving task) for all drivers.

This year, eliminating distraction in transportation is one of the ten issues on the NTSB’s Most Wanted List of transportation  safety improvements.

Distraction is complicated and we are still learning what the human brain can and cannot handle. And important research continues to come to light; last week, a new study found that voice-to-text systems offer no real safety advantage over manual texting.

There is one startlingly simple safety solution that cuts through the entire debate: Just drive. No text, no call, no post is worth a human life.

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Distracted Driving: Awareness and Prevention

By Debbie Hersman

Erica Forney, from Fort Collins, Colo., should be 13-years-old now. She might be wearing braces, playing sports, gossiping with girlfriends and looking forward to and maybe also worrying about going to high school next year.

None of that will happen for Erica. She was killed in November 2008. She was 9 and riding her bike home from school. A driver, looking down at her cell-phone, never saw the child in her path.

Today, Erica is remembered by her family and friends, and also by the month of April, which is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. Former Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO) introduced a resolution designating the month and dedicated it to Erica Forney. The House of Representatives passed the resolution 410-2 on March 23, 2010.

This April marks the third year for National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, which is growing in importance. A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that nearly 70 percent of Americans ages 18 – 64 report talking on their phones while driving in the past 30 days. About 30 percent say they texted while driving.

For years, the NTSB has seen how deadly distraction can be across all modes of transportation, but it’s on our highways where distraction claims the greatest number of lives. After investigating a crash where a pickup driver sent and received 11 texts in the 11 minutes before he ran into a truck triggering collisions that killed two and injured 38, the NTSB called for a nationwide ban on the use of personal electronic devices. This year, we put Eliminate Distraction in Transportation on our Most Wanted List.

Putting attention back in the driver’s seat requires information and outreach, like Distracted Driver Awareness Month. It also requires good laws and strong enforcement. It’s at the state level where crucial traffic safety legislation is enacted, such as the seat-belt laws that have helped save hundreds of thousands of lives. As for distraction laws, ten states and the District of Columbia ban all drivers from using handheld cell phones while driving; 39 states and the District of Columbia ban text messaging for all drivers.

Here are two web sites where you check out where your state stands on distraction and safety:

Governors Highway Safety Association

National Safety Council

And, here are two ways to make our roads safer and save lives: Drive safely every trip by putting away your portable electronic devices and get involved.

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Stopping the Senseless Tragedies

By Debbie Hersman

Just in the past week, the nation has experienced tragic losses of life on our roadways in a string of crashes involving young people, leaving a total of 15 dead.  These crashes—in Ohio, Illinois, and Texas—have left parents without a son or daughter and siblings without a brother or sister. So many lives senselessly lost.  And a report released last month shows that tragedies involving our teens are increasing.

For the first time in years, the number of 16- and 17-year-old teen driver deaths increased. And in the last decade, more than 58,000 teenagers have died in car crashes. Each year, more than 30,000 people die in car crashes in the United States, and more than 20 percent of annual U.S. highway fatalities involve teen drivers. Preventing these tragedies is a priority at the NTSB.

Our mission is to save lives and prevent injuries. Sadly, in our investigations, we see the same accident circumstances, with the same heartbreaking results, again and again. Motor vehicles are the number one killer of young people. Teen drivers are more likely to have a significant crash in their first year of driving—in fact, four times more likely than an adult or an experienced driver.  The all-too-common cause is poor judgment. Speeding, reckless driving, driving while impaired, and, increasingly, driving while distracted, divert these young drivers from the task at hand—safe, responsible driving.

Decades of crash investigations have informed our opinion that young drivers should learn to drive in a controlled environment, one that gradually introduces them to increased responsibilities.  States should implement comprehensive teen driver safety programs that include learner’s permit and intermediate driver licensing stages, with restrictions on nighttime driving, limits on the number of teen passengers, and bans on the use of portable electronic devices. These ideas aren’t new, but they are common sense and require commitment on the part of not only the driver, but also the parents and the collective community.

Driving is the most dangerous thing we let our children do. These three accidents show that our work isn’t done. Young people need to  understand the great risks and consequences of driving habits, decisions and behaviors. Education, legislation, and enforcement are all necessary ingredients to ensure that we don’t experience another fatal week for teens on our roadways.

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Driving Into a Safer Future

By Debbie Hersman

On Monday, Detroit opened the North American International Auto Show, showcasing new concepts, new technologies and new ideas. During our visit to the auto show, my colleagues, Earl Weener and Mark Rosekind, and I heard firsthand from automakers and suppliers about their efforts to address safety. In particular, we learned more about their investments in two of this year’s Most Wanted List areas: collision avoidance technology and distraction.

They are clearly putting their investments into technology. We saw impressive new concepts for the future of safety, but more importantly we saw safety features becoming standard equipment on many different models. No longer are backup cameras, adaptive cruise control and lane departure warning systems found only on luxury vehicles, they are now widely available across a spectrum of makes and models.

In the future, we will see even more advanced technologies in our cars and trucks, such as collision avoidance with active braking and lane maintaining technology. Every year the technology focused on the outside of the car is helping us become safer. When it comes to distraction, we need to make sure the technology on the inside of the car is focused on making us safer, too.

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Thanksgiving: Too Many Empty Seats at the Table

By Debbie Hersman

This past weekend, America’s roadways were clogged with Thanksgiving travelers. But there were also hundreds of empty places at Thanksgiving tables across the country this year compared to last. That’s because each year more than 400 people die in motor vehicle crashes over the long holiday weekend.

That’s just one weekend. Add all the other days of the year and the number of annual highway fatalities totals about 32,000.

Thirty-two thousand lives ended. That’s more fatalities on our roads in one year than have perished in airline crashes since the beginning of U.S. scheduled aviation nearly a century ago.

When an airliner crashes it is page 1 news followed by tremendous public demand to find out what happened and fix it immediately so it won’t happen again.

That’s understandable. The U.S. airlines carry millions of passengers every year. But, why is it acceptable to lose 32,000 people each year on our roads? Where is the outrage? Where is the call to implement safety measures to prevent the same crashes from happening again and again?

Yes, there are a host of hard-working highway safety advocates whose efforts save lives, but why do we tolerate losing the equivalent of the student population of a large state university each year? Is there “cultural novocaine” that numbs Americans to this senseless loss of life?

It’s time for the novocaine to wear off. It’s time for Americans to address our nation’s fourth-leading cause of death. Fatalities from motor vehicle crashes are only behind heart disease, cancer and stroke.

Sadly, car crashes are the number one killer of our teens. As a mother — and as one of the nation’s top transportation safety advocates — I believe we can do better.

We must do better.

With heart disease, cancer and stroke, we know there are ways to help ensure a longer and healthier life, including lifestyle choices and proper medical care. And, there’s a lot — quite a lot — that can be done to improve highway safety. Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board issued its 2013 Most Wanted List of transportation safety improvements. The majority of the items on the list address the nation’s fourth-leading cause of death.

Here’s the Most Wanted List item where the biggest difference can be made to save lives: Eliminate substance-impaired driving.

A generation ago, the NTSB investigated the nation’s deadliest substance-impaired crash. In Carrollton, Ky., an impaired driver struck a bus carrying a church youth group on its way home from an amusement park. That crash killed 24 teens and three adults and injured dozens more. Since that 1988 crash, more than 300,000 people have perished at the hands of substance-impaired drivers.

That’s a lot of empty seats at Thanksgiving tables.

Much more must be done to stem the losses from substance-impaired driving — including the use of ignition interlock technology and high-visibility enforcement.

Our new Most Wanted List also addresses a growing concern — distraction. NTSB investigations involving distraction go back years. In a 2002 crash in Largo, Md., a young driver talking on her cell-phone veered off the Capital Beltway, crossed the median, flipped over and landed on a minivan. That conversation ended in five fatalities.

Distractions that compete for a driver’s attention are only going to grow. Today, drivers can check Facebook, book dinner reservations and buy movie tickets, all while behind the wheel. That’s downright dangerous. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want to be on the road next to someone updating a Facebook page while driving.

Last December, the NTSB issued its strongest recommendation yet on distraction: a nationwide ban on the non-emergency use of portable electronic devices while driving. Some said our recommendation was extreme. You bet it was. Sometime it takes extreme measures to change cultural norms.

Technology, another issue on the new Most Wanted List, offers considerable promise for improving highway safety. For example, side-curtain air bags and electronic stability control have already shown tremendous vehicle-safety benefits. And, in the future, forward-collision warning systems can help prevent accidents due to running off the road or rear-ending a vehicle, whether the cause is an impaired, distracted or fatigued driver.

With all those fatalities, shouldn’t these safety technologies be standard on every vehicle?

Each year, too many people get those phone calls and notifications that no one ever wants to receive. If we don’t act now, next year, there will be at least 32,000 more empty seats at Thanksgiving tables. There’s even more cause for concern since U.S. highway fatality estimates are up 9 percent for the first half of this year compared with last year.

One of those empty seats could be at your table. Is that when you’ll start to care about highway safety?

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