THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 12, 1997 TAG: 9701100006
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 50 lines
With growing numbers of motor vehicles on the roads, increases in miles driven, a continuing rise in average speed and an abundance of rude, reckless, inexperienced, inept and intoxicated or drugged drivers, we should marvel at the ongoing decline in traffic fatalities, in Virginia and nationally.
A preliminary count of 1996 highway fatalities (preliminary in part because living injured who die within a year of their accidents raise the toll) has been recorded by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles: 860.
One traffic death is too many; 860 fatalities is heartbreaking. But we accept road deaths and injuries, many of them paralyzing, as inevitable. More than 40,000 a year are killed on U.S. roads. That's better than the more than 50,000 a year that was often the toll in the 1970s and 1980s.
The diminishing annual traffic-death toll in state and nation is gratifying; 860 Virginia traffic fatalities is 40 fewer than the 900 in 1995, the 925 in 1994 and the 1,118 a decade ago.
But each traffic death brings heartbreak to someone. And imagine the shock of 860 deaths from a massive explosion in a parking garage beneath a New York skyscraper. Such extensive Carnage would have resulted if the truck bomb exploded in New York City's World Trade Center parking garage had been more powerful than it was. And the pain inflicted by the truck-bomb explosion that destroyed the Oklahoma City federal building, killing and injuring hundreds of innocents, has yet to dissipate.
No less than efforts to protect people from terrorist acts, efforts to bring down the number of traffic accidents and traffic deaths and injuries should never cease. Riding in motor vehicles becomes safer every year, thanks to improved highway design, seat belts, air bags, crash-protection built into motor-vehicle bodies, the spotlight and crackdown on drunken driving and more driver training (with emphasis on young and elderly drivers).
The shrinking highway death toll is all to the good. Shrinking it faster should be a national goal. Individual drivers - too many of whom drive without decent regard for their own safety much less others' - must be encouraged - by use of harsh penalties for infractions, if necessary - to drive prudently. Manufacturers must incorporate more and more features into motor vehicles that reduce the vulnerability of occupants to crashes. Making motor vehicles more difficult to steal would curb thefts by juveniles that often lead to high-speed police chases and loss of life.
And highways designed and built to promote smooth, safe travel must be maintained in ways that foster and enhance safety. Traffic accidents claim far fewer lives today than two decades or even one decade ago. The progress made to date is no accident; it is attributable to countless conscious efforts. So will further progress be.