DATE: Wednesday, August 20, 1997            TAG: 9708190015

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   59 lines

DON'T SLIGHT SAFETY IF THE SAFETEA COALITION WINS, WE ALL WIN.

A broad-based coalition - sailing under the banner of SAFETEA - is lobbying to ensure that road safety gets a boost in the emerging reauthorization of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA).

Wish the coalition success. Motorists should ask their U.S. senators and congressional representatives not to slight safety in the forthcoming ISTEA legislation. They should ask that more money be provided for motorist-safety programs in the years ahead..

For more than a decade, U.S. highway fatalities declined in (1) absolute numbers (for example, from 44,599 in 1990 to 39,250 in 1992) and (2) in relation to 100 million vehicle miles traveled (for example, 2.1 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 1990 to 1.7 in 1992.

Unfortunately, highway deaths rose to 40,150 in 1993, 40,716 in 1994 and 41,798 in 1995. Final statistics are not yet in for 1996, but one careful estimate, using National Highway Transportation Safety Administration data, is 41,500. Although the absolute number of fatalities is up, the toll per 100 million vehicle miles traveled is constant at 1.7.

That road deaths are no longer decreasing troubles safety proponents. It ought to trouble the rest of us. Seat belts, air bags and other safety enhancements to motor vehicles, improved highway design and signage, crackdowns on drunken driving and enforcement of other traffic laws, driver education, motor-vehicle-safety inspections, the federal motorcycle helmet mandate (repealed in 1995), restrictions on tractor-trailers' size - such steps lessened highway carnage.

Continuing shrinkage in auto crashes, fatalities and injuries is in everyone's best interest. Traffic-related deaths and injuries are costly in blood, tears and treasure.

According to federal statistics, 3.4 million people a year are injured in motor-vehicle crashes, with a resulting annual monetary cost to society of $150 billion.

Crash-related fatalities, injuries, grief and economic losses can be cut, as the long decline in road deaths showed. Emphasizing safe-driving practices, improving design and construction of highways and enforcing traffic laws save lives and limbs.

Wearing seat belts - and seat belt usage in the United States is lowest in the developed world - can be the difference between life and death in crashes. The National Highway Transportation Administration reports that two thirds of the more than 32,000 motor-vehicle occupants killed annually in crashes are not in seat belts. The agency estimates that 45 percent - 8,600 - of these would survive if buckled in.

The SAFETEA coalition numbers consumer, insurance, police, fire, medical, public-health and anti-drunken-driving groups among its 67 members. Among other things, it seeks in the ISTEA legislation a half-cent of the federal motor-fuel tax or a percentage of highway-construction funds for safety; incentives to the states to adopt 0.8 percent blood-alcohol-content and primary seat-belt-usage laws; a truck size-and-weight freeze; and funds for improved air bags and development and testing of systems to (1) alert drivers to probable imminent crashes in time to avoid them and (2) prevent intoxicated and drug-impaired people from driving.

If the coalition wins, we all win.

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