Let the Ghosts and Goblins Be Scary: Don’t Drink and Drive

By Mark Rosekind

Historically, Halloween has been a night where many alcohol-impaired drivers take to the road. In 2009, nearly half of the highway deaths on Halloween night involved impaired drivers. This is especially scary because on this night our children trick-or-treat across our streets and through our neighborhoods. However, this year many communities across the country are taking actions that should scare alcohol-impaired drivers — they are stepping up enforcement with sobriety checkpoints and targeted law enforcement efforts.

Last month, I visited two sobriety checkpoints in Northern Virginia. They were the result of a collaboration of the Fairfax County Police, the Prince William County Police, and the Virginia State Police. These checkpoints covered both directions of one busy road and successfully identified numerous alcohol-impaired drivers. The overwhelming police presence demonstrated the community’s zero tolerance for alcohol-impaired driving.

Halloween is a night when the police will be out in full force. There is no need to drive after having too much to drink. As you and your friends plan your Halloween celebrations, before you even leave plan on how you will get home safely. Identify the designated driver before you head out or bring enough money for a cab. There are also free services, such as the SoberRide program in the Washington, DC area, that you can use.

Please make Halloween safe for everyone and let the “scaring” be done by the ghosts and goblins and not by the drivers on the roads.

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Mark Rosekind, Ph.D., is a Member of the National Transportation Safety Board. He is a frequent contributor to the NTSB blog.

Saluting School Bus Safety

By Deborah Hersman

Chairman Hersman with NAPT Executives

Earlier this week, I joined the professionals who safely transport our nation’s children on all those big yellow buses to celebrate the unparalleled school bus safety record. School buses are, by far, the safest way for students to get to school, home, and to a host of school-related activities.

Here’s a measure of school bus safety: Among student fatalities during normal school hours, more than half were traveling with a teen driver, under one-fourth with an adult driver, and just 1 percent were traveling by school bus.

In addition to transporting our children safely, there’s another big benefit to the big yellow bus. It would take 36 cars to carry the students who travel on one school bus. On a yearly basis, school buses keep an estimated 17.3 million cars off the roads surrounding our schools.

Here’s a big shout out to all the professionals responsible for taking such good care of our students. Here’s what I told the professionals at the National Association of Pupil Transportation on Tuesday morning.

Saving Lives: Helping More Teens Drive Safely

By Robert Sumwalt

This week is National Teen Driver Safety Week — and of all the lifesaving weeks in the year — this is one that can make a real big difference. Traffic accidents account for 36 percent of all deaths among 15 to 20 year olds. In fact, car crashes kill more young people every year than suicide, drugs, violence, and alcohol – combined. This is why the NTSB placed Teen Driver Safety on its Most Wanted List.

Teen Driver Safety is one of the NTSB’s highest national advocacy priorities, and an area in which we see far too many states moving far too slowly.

This week, I had a wonderful opportunity to address the National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS) National Teen Distracted Driving Summit. I applaud NOYS for its aggressive stands on underage drinking and driving, seat belt use, and Graduated Driver Licensing.

As I said in my remarks at the National Teen Distracted Driving Summit, it is in the area of Graduated Driver Licensing where NOYS can make an enormous, and immediate, impact. You don’t have to wait on your state legislatures to change their laws on GDLs, or underage drinking and driving. You can reach out to your peers directly and educate them on the right behaviors, the safest behaviors. It’s that personal, one-on-one interaction that can effect meaningful change.

To help you — as a teen, a parent, or a friend or neighbor — to take action to improve teen driving safety, here’s a first step. Watch this riveting video that NOYS showed at the summit on the importance of teen driving safety. You can bet that I am going to make sure my 17-year-old watches it, too.

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Robert L. Sumwalt has been a Member of the NTSB since 2006. He is a frequent contributor to the blog.

Know the School Bus Danger Zone

By Deborah Hersman

 

The theme of this year’s National School Bus Safety Week (October 17 – 21) is “Be Aware — Know the Danger Zone.” Pictured is the winning poster in the National Association of Pupil Transportation’s (NAPT) annual safety poster contest. You probably know the danger zone is the area around the bus where students can get hit by passing vehicles and from vehicles on the shoulder of the road. Yet, thanks in large part to school bus community’s outstanding safety outreach, including poster contests and national safety week, traveling on the big yellow bus is the safest way for our students to get to school.

Next week, I am speaking at NAPT’s Annual Summit. I look forward to congratulating the many professionals in the pupil transportation community for their outstanding work to produce an unequalled safety record. School bus accidents are rare. And, when they do happen, because of the school bus community’s commitment to safety, they seldom result in fatalities or serious injuries to bus occupants.

It is up to everyone on the road to follow traffic laws and safe practices when approaching school buses. So, the next time you see a big yellow bus, be aware and know the danger zone.

V2V – Communicating Vehicle to Vehicle

By Deborah Hersman

This week, I was in Orlando, Florida, for the ITS World Congress. ITS stands for Intelligent Transportation Systems, which, in short, means using technology to improve transportation safety and efficiency. Before I spoke at a session about using technology to improve safety for aging drivers, I had the opportunity to see a demonstration of the Department of Transportation’s Safety Pilot program.

Safety Pilot  involves testing connected vehicle technologies to determine their effectiveness in reducing crashes. Vehicle to vehicle (V2V) or “Connected vehicles” enables vehicles to “talk” to each other. For example, I rode in a Mercedes Benz and then a Ford with Gregory Winfree, Acting Administrator of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, at the ITS demonstration. These were just two of the many cars from eight different manufacturers that were equipped with V2V technologies at the testing site. During my test ride, I experienced vehicles that assisted the driver with blind spot detection and other warnings to prevent collisions through aural, visual or haptic alerts.

These were not self-driving cars, but rather technology assisting the human driver in making decisions. Connected vehicle technology is emerging and holds promise to help improve safety on our roadways. With 33,000 annual fatalities on our roads, this is important technology to pursue.

We need to use all the tools in our toolkit — including putting down our cell phones and listening to alerts — to save lives and prevent needless tragedies. I commend the Department of Transportation’s RITA and all the manufacturers and organizations involved in the pilot for the work they are doing to test and deploy technology to improve safety on the road.