Motorcycle Safety Is Everyone’s Responsibility

By Chair Jennifer Homendy

This is the first in a three-part series examining the safety of vulnerable road users, as new federal data show a rise in traffic deaths among motorcyclists, bicyclists, and pedestrians last year.

When it comes to learning, I’m one of those people who doesn’t just want to read about something — I want to experience it firsthand whenever possible.

That’s why I got my motorcycle endorsement.

In fact, enrolling in the training course was one of the first things I did when I became an NTSB Board Member back in 2018. I wanted to feel the thrill of operating a motorcycle, learn from my classmates about their love of riding, and gain a deeper understanding of the safety risks all riders face.

Most of all, I wanted to become a more effective safety advocate.

Photo of Chair Jennifer Homendy at a Wheels Up Motorcycle Training Course, in Fredericksburg, VA.

A Tragic New Record

Motorcyclists — motorcycle riders and their passengers — have the highest risk of fatal injury among all motor vehicle users. A major reason is that motorcycles afford riders less protection in a crash.

This means, for every mile they traveled in 2020, the average motorcyclist’s risk of death in a traffic crash was 28 times greater than that of a passenger car occupant.

The picture is only getting bleaker. New data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) show that 6,101 motorcyclists died on our roads last year. Not only is this an all-time high — it’s a 9% increase from 2020, which held the previous record.

That means the last two years are the deadliest on record for motorcyclists in the United States.

What Needs to be Done

We know what needs to happen to save motorcyclists’ lives.

First and foremost, we need to adopt the Safe System approach to protect  vulnerable road users, such as motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians. It’s so important that it’s on our 2021-2022 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements.

A Safe System addresses all aspects of traffic safety: road users, vehicles, speeds, roads, and post-crash care. We must make better safety investments, from road treatments, vehicle design, and collision-avoidance systems to strong traffic safety laws to mitigate risk and save lives for all road users.

But what does that mean in practice? The first step is to change the way we think and talk about safety. When it comes to motorcycle safety, it means we must stop spending so much time talking about what riders should do to mitigate their risk.

It’s not only unfair to put the full safety responsibility on motorcyclists, but it’s also ineffective. In a truly safe system, no individual road user’s action or inaction can cost them their life; there are redundancies built in so that if one part fails, a person is still protected.

The NTSB took a deep dive into motorcycle safety with our 2018 research report, which has specific recommendations to protect motorcyclists. And, because motorcyclists are at such risk in crashes with passenger vehicles, we should also heed NTSB recommendations in our reports on speeding and substance-impaired driving.

Combined, these three reports have 50 safety recommendations — that’s 50 opportunities for regulators, states, policymakers, manufacturers, and associations to save lives on our roads.

As we close out Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month and head into the deadly days of summer, now’s the perfect moment to implement NTSB safety recommendations.

The Time is Now

Getting my motorcycle endorsement helped me see the road from a rider’s perspective. It also deepened my resolve to ensure every motorcycle rider and passenger is safe on our roads.

But you don’t need to have firsthand experience to understand how dire the situation is. After all, we set a tragic new record for motorcyclist deaths last year. 

We can’t wait another day. The families of the 6,101 riders we lost last year deserve action.

A Call to Action from Kennedy

By Chair Jennifer Homendy

This week, I visited NASA, Boeing, Blue Origin, and Space-X at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. KSC has been a leader in space exploration for over 50 years. The Apollo, Skylab, and Space Shuttle programs took off from there, as did the Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars Rover project, and New Horizons, the first spacecraft to visit Pluto.

To visit Launch Complex 39A and stand where the Apollo and Space Shuttle astronauts once stood before they launched into space was humbling, and as I watched Space-X’s Transporter-5 launch and land from the balcony of Operation Support Building 2 and the return of Boeing’s Starliner Spacecraft virtually, I was reminded of how important it is that we learn from the past as we advance into our future.

Exactly sixty-one years earlier, to the day, on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress and laid out a truly ambitious goal: landing a man on the Moon. Not just landing a man on the Moon but returning him safely to Earth. He called for national leadership and implored Congress and the country to take a firm and sustained commitment to a new course of action, “a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.” And he demanded that the whole of government, working together as one, dedicate themselves to jumpstarting a future he knew was in the best interests of our country.

The vision that President Kennedy laid out 61 years ago continues to shape our nation and the world. Today, NASA is developing its deep space rocket, the most powerful rocket it has ever built, the Space Launch System (SLS), while commercial space companies transport cargo for the federal government and private businesses to space as well as to the International Space Station (ISS). These companies have also begun transporting passengers.

Commercial spaceflight is a rapidly evolving industry and shows tremendous promise. Over the last decade, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-licensed commercial launches and re-entries have grown tremendously, from 1 licensed launch and 0 licensed re-entries in 2011 to 54 licensed launches and 6 licensed re-entries in 2021. The federal government needs to be prepared for these exciting technological advances. For NTSB, that means ensuring we remain ready if an accident occurs. If the past has taught us anything, it’s not a matter of “if” an accident will occur, it’s a matter of when.

The NTSB has investigated accidents involving space vehicles for over 30 years. In 1986, we participated in the investigation in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster; in 1993, we investigated the Orbital Sciences Pegasus accident; we again participated when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry and 7 astronauts died, in 2003; and in 2004, we assisted NASA with the Genesis Sample-Return Capsule crash investigation. More recently, in 2014, we investigated the in-flight explosion of SpaceShip Two.

All this is to say, we aren’t new to commercial space. The fact is NTSB is world renowned for its reputation as the “gold standard” for thorough, fact-based, independent investigations of accidents in all modes of transportation, whether those accidents occur on our roads, railways, waterways, or in our skies. We have been at the forefront of safety and the advancement of new technologies and new ways of moving people and goods for decades. We’re used to new challenges, and we’re ready for them.

The key to our success is our independence. That independence is what sets us apart. We aren’t tasked with exploring space; that’s NASA’s mission. We aren’t tasked with promoting, licensing, or regulating the safety of the commercial space industry; that’s the job of the FAA. Our entire mission is focused on determining what happened when a tragedy occurs, why it happened, and issuing safety recommendations aimed at preventing it from happening again. In other words, our one and only goal is to save lives and prevent the reoccurrence of terrible tragedies.

These past few months, I’ve spent time with our safety partners at FAA and NASA in hopes of ensuring we’re all prepared should tragedy occur. I’ve done this because I believe that the disparate arms of the federal government must work together to ensure the safety and success of this burgeoning industry. The commercial space industry is American innovation at its finest. As a government, we don’t want to get in the way of awe-inspiring technological innovations we once thought unimaginable, but we want to provide guardrails and cooperation, guidance and protection of the public, and we all need to work together as one to make that happen.

Photo of NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy and NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center Deputy Director Kelvin Manning

Photo of NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy and NASA Associate Administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, Kathy Lueders

Sixty-one years ago, President Kennedy called on us to work together for the best interests of our country. The need for all of us to work together resonates as much today. I call on our safety partners at NASA, at FAA, at the Departments of Commerce and Defense to work with us and the stakeholders who I visited this week, among others, to ensure that safety remains a top priority alongside commercial space innovation.

Collision-Avoidance Technologies Can Improve Safety for Teen Drivers

By Member Michael Graham

Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death for teens. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2019, approximately 2,400 teens in the United States aged 13–19 died and about 258,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes. This means that approximately 7 teens died, and hundreds more were injured, every day due to preventable motor vehicle crashes.

These numbers are staggering and unacceptable.

From our investigations, we know that collision-avoidance technologies—increasingly seen in newer vehicles—can help reduce that number. And a recent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) study has also found that crash-avoidance features and teen-specific vehicle technologies have the potential to prevent or mitigate up to 75% of all fatal crashes involving teen drivers. Collision-avoidance technologies include features such as automatic emergency braking (AEB), collision warning, and lane departure prevention. These features can serve to warn a driver of an impending crash and stop or slow the vehicle to prevent or mitigate a collision.

To increase awareness about the life-saving capabilities of collision-avoidance technologies among parents, teens, and educators, on March 23, I convened a panel of teen driving safety experts and researchers to explore how collision-avoidance technologies can improve the safety of our teen drivers. ​​ Panelists included representatives from the IIHS, Alliance for Automotive Innovation, OFFICIAL Driving Schools, AAA National, and INRIX, as well as investigators from the NTSB.

During this webinar, we discussed the role of vehicle technology in reducing teen traffic crashes and fatalities. We dove deeper into the IIHS’s recent research on collision-avoidance technology and teen driver safety, explored perspectives from educators and the automotive industry, and addressed how vehicle technology, if made standard in all vehicles, can contribute to equitable and accessible safe transportation for all.

I encourage all of you to watch the full recording of our webinar—but especially if you’re a parent, educator, motor vehicle administrator, or highway department of transportation employee.

One point we all agreed on during the webinar, is that these technologies have the potential to dramatically improve safety for teen drivers. However, they need to be broadly accepted and equitable, and the barriers to adoption—such as education, awareness, availability, and affordability—need to be addressed.

Here were some of the key takeaways, as summed up by our panelists:

• We need to emphasize education and safe driving behavior. We also need to educate drivers on how these systems function and the role of the driver. It’s important to integrate these technologies into driver skills training to broaden awareness.
• We must understand how teens are interacting with collision-avoidance systems. There’s an opportunity for engagement with academics and researchers to dig into the data and look at it from a local level.
• More work should be done for equity and access.
• Modern training vehicles at driving schools, preparing instructors to educate teens on these technologies, and better communication between driving schools and parents about the benefits of these technologies could instill the benefits of collision-avoidance technologies and encourage voluntary adoption.
• State departments or agencies that provide training curriculum to driving schools should encourage technology use and incorporate it in the training curriculum.
• States need to look at their existing graduated driver license law (GDL) and strengthen them to ensure they have a comprehensive GDL program that provides a three-stage graduated process for newly licensed young drivers to gain experience while minimizing risk.
• We are heading in the wrong direction with fatalities; we must do more at the federal level, with the new car assessment ratings and research to help us guide the technology forward. These collision-avoidance technologies should be standard in all vehicles.

As a result of our crash investigations, the NTSB has made numerous recommendations to implement and encourage the use of collision-avoidance technologies. The topic is highlighted on our 2021–2022 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements (MWL), and teen driving safety has been a topic on previous MWLs. We encourage you to check out our webpages on these topics to learn more about our specific recommendations.

May is Global Youth Traffic Safety Month. If you haven’t already done so this month, take the time to learn more about these technologies—for the sake of your teen and the sake of road safety. The IIHS, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the National Safety Council all offer information on these technologies. What better way to protect our next generation of drivers than to learn more now about these life-saving technologies? As we all work toward achieving zero traffic deaths and serious injuries on our roads, we must remember that it all begins with preparing our teens with the best possible technologies and strategies for preventing roadway crashes.

Where is the Outrage? Road Users Deserve Better

By Chair Jennifer Homendy

42,915

16-year high

10.5-percent increase

An early estimate, released this week by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), shows 42,915 people—117 people per day—died on the nation’s roads last year. I, for one, am outraged by these needless deaths. Those victims are mothers and fathers, children and grandparents, friends, and coworkers. They are also often the most vulnerable among us. Where is our collective outrage over these deaths? Zero fatalities is our goal!

Here are a few insights within the data:

• Pedestrian fatalities up 13 percent
• Motorcyclist fatalities up 9 percent
• Bicyclist fatalities up 5 percent
• Fatalities in speeding-related crashes up 5 percent
• Fatalities in police-reported, alcohol-involvement crashes up 5 percent
• Fatalities on urban roads up 16 percent
• Fatalities in crashes involving at least one large truck up 13 percent

The NTSB knows what needs to be done. The NTSB has investigated countless crashes, issued thousands of safety recommendations, and identified the data-driven approaches to make our roads safer, to prevent deaths and injuries. The NTSB has highlighted safety improvements on our Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements that can save lives on our roads.

We don’t need more guidance, we don’t need pilot programs, we need action. Action by regulators. Action by lawmakers and states. Action by manufacturers. Action by road designers and engineers. Action by all road users. We need to adopt the Safe System Approach and share the responsibility for safety.

Safe Speeds

Speed increases the likelihood of a crash and injury severity when a crash occurs. Speeding contributes to about one-third of all traffic-related crash fatalities. States must set safe speeds. Speeds that ensure that when a crash happens—because they will—whether you are inside or outside a vehicle, you will survive. States’ decades-old, one-size-fits-all approach for setting speed limits based on the speed of vehicles is senseless, focused on drivers rather than all road users, and is just leading to increasing speed limits across the U.S. And State Departments of Transportation reliance on education over proven countermeasures like implementation of speed safety cameras is ineffective.

Safe Vehicles

Since 1995, the NTSB has issued more than 25 safety recommendations to the US Department of Transportation modal agencies and vehicle manufacturers on the need to develop performance standards for collision avoidance technologies and to make them standard in all vehicles. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: nearly 30 years later, we’re still waiting.

Prominently bolded on NHTSA’s homepage is the phrase “Safe cars save lives.” However, the safest cars are still only for those who can afford them. NHTSA must act to implement NTSB safety recommendations and mandate that vehicle safety technology be standard equipment on all vehicles. Safety isn’t a luxury. NHTSA must also update the New Car Assessment Program, ASAP, to push auto manufacturers to implement, and drive consumer demand for, the safest technologies in vehicles.

Safe Roads

The nation’s roads were designed to efficiently move motor vehicles; they weren’t designed for the safe mobility of all road users. We have made no progress in recent years to prevent deaths among those who walk, bike, and roll on our nation’s roads. States must adopt the Safe System Approach and make infrastructure investments and improvements that prioritize the safety for vulnerable road users.

However, I’m increasingly concerned that many in the highway safety community don’t know how the Safe System Approach differs from the traditional, flawed approach of the 3E’s: education, enforcement, engineering. In other words, is this becoming just an “inside the beltway” term? We cannot let this moment pass us by. We need to ditch our overreliance on ineffective education and enforcement campaigns to address increasing death and look to much better, long-term solutions.

Safe Road Users

The NTSB cannot make safety recommendations to individual road users. Making safe choices is only something we can encourage and advocate for. We’ve seen individual choices contribute to the cause of countless highway crashes or severity of injuries. Distraction while driving or walking. Speeding. Impaired driving. Not buckling seat belts or wearing protective gear like helmets. All these choices have resulted in the devastating loss of life. We implore all road users to make safe choices to protect themselves and others. Many of the fatalities on our roadways would be prevented if safe choices were made every trip, every time.

Postcrash Care

The Safe System Approach accepts that crashes will happen, but that they should not be deadly. We must ensure that in the event of a crash, those involved have efficient access to the care and resources they need to live and recover. Our first responders—law enforcement, EMS, fire, and 911 personnel—need appropriate resources to serve our communities and respond to crashes. Law enforcement, EMS, and fire personnel need safe working environments free of the risk of secondary crashes.

A key principle of the Safe System Approach is shared responsibility. The entire system, our current approach to traffic safety, is failing all road users. We all—government, auto makers, policy makers, law enforcement, planners, engineers and, yes, road users—are failing. We must do better. I know that if we all come to the safety table and work together to implement the strategies that we know are successful, we can reach zero and save lives, both inside and outside vehicles.​

We have the tools to reverse the trend. Now we need everyone to act. Lives depend on it!