Most did not offer (or, indeed, could not find) a “silver bullet” response.  Most offered ‘answers’ about what one blogger called the classically known “three E’s”: enforcement, engineering, and education. “E” for epidemiology also emerged as a category of answers.  In short, the collective response proposed a four-pronged approach.

 

Enforcement that focuses on the existing laws to control speeding, to encourage wearing seat belts, and to discourage impaired driving has saved lives and will continue to do so.  Tried and tested regulatory schemes that work—like graduated licensing—should be enacted nationally.  Even schemes with inconclusive effectiveness, like restricting cellphone usage while driving, can “help to raise awareness about the dangers of distracted driving and may help to keep it from happening.”  “Novel risky technologies” and “new risky behaviors” call for better and newer rules and regulations and, accordingly, innovative enforcement measures.  A corollary of this is the need for more highly skilled regulators.

 

Engineering communities as “livable places that accommodate all users—cars, transit, walkers and cyclists,” in short, designing streets for everyone to use, creates safer streets.  Other engineering solutions included developing “better and more diverse public transport options,” and shipping more freight by rail to remove dangerous truck traffic.

 

One call “for the American auto industry to become once again the leader in traffic safety by hiring engineers to build safer cars rather than hiring lawyers and former government officials to build better loopholes for unsafe cars” contrasts with another blogger’s warning about “the growing consumer and political interest in smaller, less crash-worthy vehicles.”  Calling this a worrisome long-term trend, this blogger notes that, “The last time America witnessed a significant downsizing of vehicles (1975 to 1985), the unintended result was about 2,000 additional traffic fatalities per year.”

 

Better education would “bring American driver training practices up to the standards practiced in many European countries…better understanding of the principles of car control, more hands-on demonstrations of accident avoidance techniques and preferred emergency conduct along with more stringent licensing rules.”

 

“Epidemiology” answers propose a new way of thinking about traffic death, “not as a collection of “accidents” but as a public health crisis.  This means investing in highway safety as if it were a public health issue and insisting on evidence-based solutions — laws and programs that work and that aren’t just ‘feel good’.  A “holistic solution” envisions safer drivers—people who highly value and rigorously pursue traffic safety—in safer cars on safer roads, covered with enhanced emergency medical services.

 

All are valid comments on a very big issue.