Traffic fatalities decline nationally despite increased travel

Brent Jennings, PE
Highway Safety Manager

Friday (Dec. 9) the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) informed our office that the national 2010 fatality count fell to 32,885, the lowest level since 1949. The record-breaking national decline in traffic fatalities occurred even as American drivers traveled nearly 46 billion more miles during the year or an increase of 1.6 percent over the 2009 level. This fact breaks the myth that fatalities are decreasing because Americans are driving less as a nation. In Idaho the trend is similar.

Also released last Friday is a new measure of fatalities related to distracted driving or “distraction-affected crashes.” This is a broader effort to refine data collection to get better information about the role of distraction in crashes and the new measure is designed to focus more narrowly on crashes in which a driver was most likely to have been distracted.

While the national Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) previously recorded a broad range of potential distractions, such as careless driving and cell phone presents in the vehicle, the new measure focuses on distractions that are most likely to affect crash involvement, such as distraction by dialing a cellular phone or texting and distraction by an outside person/event.

Idaho continues to be a leader in the nation in crash reporting and the inclusion of distracted driving elements were introduced last summer with the publication of version 4.0 of E-Impact, Idaho’s electronic crash reporting form. Regarding Idaho’s distracted driving elements found in the crash report, 2012 will be the first full year of data that is available for analysis.

A new national survey offers additional insights into how drivers behave when it comes to texting and cell phone use while behind the wheel and their perceptions of the safety risks of distracted driving.

Survey respondents indicated they answer calls on most trips; they acknowledge few driving situations when they would not use the phone or text; and yet they feel unsafe when riding in vehicles in which the driver is texting and they support bans on texting and cell phone use.

These findings provide further evidence that distracted driving is a complex problem that is both hard to measure and difficult to address given conflicting public attitudes and behaviors. Among the findings, more than three-quarters of drivers report that they are willing to answer calls on all, most, or some trips.

Drivers also report that they rarely consider traffic situations when deciding when to use their phone. While most drivers said they are willing to answer a call and many will send a text while driving, almost all of these same drivers reported that they would feel very unsafe as a passenger if their driver was sending or receiving text messages. Over one-third report that they would feel very unsafe if their driver was using a handheld phone.

NHTSA’s adoption of the new “distraction-affected crash” measure for the 2010 FARS data is one step in a continuing effort to focus in on driver distraction and separate it from other issues. Idaho supports this effort.

As part of its commitment to reduce the problem of distracted driving, Idaho will continue to look for improved data sources. While police reports of serious crashes are an important source, they are limited by the evidence available to the officer. As a result, work to optimize information from crash reports by improving reporting forms and officer training will be ongoing. In addition, NHTSA will analyze new data on driver distraction from a new naturalistic study in which about 2,000 cars will be fitted with cameras and other equipment that will record driver behavior over a period of two years. Researchers will be able to use these data to associate driver behaviors with crash involvement.

As you can see much needs to be done in the area of distracted driving, but by all working together our goal to continue the downward trend Toward Zero Deaths can be realized.

Published 12-16-2011