Federal Highway Traffic Safety Policies: Impacts and Opportunities

In 2017, 37,133 Americans were killed in crashes involving motor vehicles. Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death for Americans overall, and the number one cause of death for teenagers. Millions of people are injured in crashes annually, and motor vehicle crashes are estimated to have cost some $242 billion in 2010 in lost productivity, medical costs, legal costs, property damage, and time lost in congestion caused by crashes. As measured by the number of deaths per mile people are driving, the rate at which people are killed in traffic crashes declined significantly from 1929, when records began to be kept, until 2014, but has risen by almost 10% between 2014 and 2016. Congress has played a role in improving highway safety. Making road travel safer was one of the responsibilities Congress gave to the federal Department of Transportation (DOT) when it created the department in 1966. Congress has directed DOT to improve the safety of automobile design and of road design, as well as to support programs to improve driver behavior. An oft-cited statistic in traffic safety is that as many as 90% of road deaths are due at least in part to driver error or misbehavior (such as driving too fast for conditions or driving while drunk or distracted). Driver behavior is a state, not federal, matter; in an effort to address it, Congress has enacted programs that encourage states to pass laws to promote safer driving. The role of driver behavior versus road design and traffic management is a subject of debate. Some analysts note that road designs and traffic management arrangements often allow, or even encourage, driver error and misbehavior, and so play a larger role in crashes than is often recognized. One of the core highway capital improvement programs authorized by Congress is intended to fund safety improvements to highway infrastructure. A federal study estimated that half of the improvement in highway fatality rates between 1960 and 2012 was attributable to improvements in vehicle safety technologies, with social and demographic changes, driver behavior interventions, and improvements in road design playing smaller roles. Most of the vehicle safety technologies analyzed in the study increased the likelihood that vehicle occupants would survive a crash. More recently, technological improvement has focused on preventing crashes. While some crash-prevention technologies, such as automatic braking and lane departure warnings, are available now, others, such as vehicle-to-vehicle communication and vehicles that can operate without human intervention, are not yet on the market. Even when these become commercially available, given that most vehicles remain in use for well over a decade, it may be many years before the majority of cars on the road incorporate these technologies. While U.S. crash and injury rates are no longer declining, and even rising, several other nations have significantly improved their highway safety rates in the past few years, surpassing the U.S. rates. The International Transport Forum’s Road Safety Annual Report 2018 found that between 2010 and 2016, 26 of the 32 nations tracked in the report had reduced their number of traffic deaths, some by over 30%; during the same period, the number of U.S. deaths increased by 14%. Policy options that might further reduce traffic crashes, injuries, and fatalities include encouraging states to adopt stronger laws regarding use of seat belts and motorcycle helmets and encouraging the use of automated traffic enforcement to reduce speeding and failure to stop at red lights and stop signs. While a majority of the population supports mandatory motorcycle helmet laws and automated traffic enforcement, and these measures are demonstrably effective in reducing deaths, these measures provoke opposition from a smaller but vociferous portion of the population.