Audio clip
Allen Branum
Drivers across the nation are safer on today's roadways than they have been since the 1950s, and those in Tennessee and Georgia might be even more so.
The U.S. Department of Transportation announced last week that overall traffic fatalities reported for 2009 reached their lowest level -- 33,963 -- since 1954, dropping by nearly 9 percent from 2008.
Officials in Tennessee and Georgia report similar decreases in traffic fatalities, with Tennessee's fatalities decreasing by 6 percent and Georgia's by 14 percent.
In North Georgia, there has been a concerted effort to make local routes safer for drivers, said Norm Cressman, safety program manager for the Georgia Department of Transportation.
"We've put a lot of emphasis on what we call off-system safety," he said. "Because we had so many fatalities on our local routes, we thought if we're really going to get our numbers down, we need to start addressing the local routes."
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Staff photo by Jake Daniels/Chattanooga Times Free Press Traffic deaths in the U.S. fell last year to their lowest levels since 1954, the U.S. Department of Transportation reports.
Small bits of work such as adding more safety signs, yellow striping on the roadways, guardrail upgrades and reflectors have made a difference in keeping drivers safe, Mr. Cressman said.
Since 2005, the state's highest fatality year since 1973, traffic deaths have decreased by about 28 percent, but Mr. Cressman said it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what has led to the downward trend. He said the state's motor fuel revenue and vehicle miles traveled are both down, which play a role, as do increased safety measures.
"It's really hard for us to truly quantify the effectiveness of our countermeasures," he said, mentioning that law enforcement and education efforts also have helped make the roadways safer.
Tennessee's fatality rate also has dropped over the past three years.
"We have set a record in each of the last three years for our fatality rate," said Kendell Poole, director of the Tennessee Governor's Highway Safety Office in Nashville. "We're all the way down to unprecedented levels in our fatality rates."
Fatalities have decreased by about 25 percent during that time, he said.
Mr. Poole said statewide campaigns such as "Booze It and Lose It" and "Click It or Ticket" are important for getting out the message about decreasing traffic-related deaths.
Through grants, partnerships with law enforcement and working with Tennessee Department of Transportation engineers, traffic fatalities were under 1,000 for 2009, with a goal of fewer than 900 this year.
Roger Thompson, a criminal justice professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, said possible reasons for the decrease in traffic-related fatalities include more effective speed enforcement strategies, higher seat belt use and fewer people driving due to tough economic conditions.
Hamilton County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Allen Branum credited sobriety checkpoints and officer visibility as two vital reasons for the decreasing number of fatal accidents in the county.
"A lot of our fatalities have some contributing factors that involve alcohol, speed or impaired judgment," Chief Branum said. "If we can get the word out, sometimes that keeps somebody from getting behind the wheel, and we'd rather stop them from getting under the wheel than write a ticket."
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Brittany Cofer is a business reporter who has been with the Chattanooga Times Free Press since January 2010. She previously worked as a general assignment Metro reporter. In the Business department, she covers banking, retail, tourism, consumer issues and green issues. Brittany is from Conyers, Ga., and spent two years at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Ga., before transferring to the University of Georgia. She graduated from the university’s Grady College of Journalism in December ...
Perhaps a more accurate and more meaningful way to measure traffic fatalities would be to measure in deaths-per-vehicle-mile. That way, fewer vehicle miles driven would not skew the data as it does when people-killed-per-year is used.
In other words -- the fewer miles driven, the fewer people killed, of course. That is what this article shows. Fewer cars on the road would automatically drop the death rate, other things being constant.
If safety is the dominant factor being examined here [and that's a good thing], other variables should be stabilized as much as practicable.
So...did the rate of deaths-per-vehicle-mile drop or not?
Probably the biggest factors in the welcome decline in traffic fatalities are engineering factors - safer cars and safer roads.
Proponents of Big Brother traffic cameras like to point to declining fatality rates and say the cameras are having the desired effect. But, in reality, traffic safety has been improving steadily for many years as cars and roads have improved ... long before cameras were in widespread use.
rolando, in answer to your question I do not know, but I suspect they have. I know that in the past year alone the deaths declined by almost 9%, with a 22% drop in the past three years. I strongly doubt that the number of miles driven has declined by that much, but I don't have the statistics handy.
I do know that the total number of traffic deaths is at its lowest point now since the 1950s. And there were certainly a lot fewer cars on the road then.
All the states mentioned in the article plus some 20 more have photo enforcement programs. Interesting that the implementation of these programs, that have doubled in the past 3 years, got no mention!
I suspect in the long run, red-light cameras are not a significant factor in national death-rates; not enough cameras [yet], too many crashes. For local, on-the-spot rates, their value would be of use.
Crashes in the 50's were a bit more serious, MJ...no seatbelts or airbags in use. I wonder also if the new, light-weight cars are of value...it might be better when all the heavy-weight cars, SUVs, pickups, etc finally wear out. They are inherently safer than the little ones in any mixed crash.
Finally, maybe what they said about bad California drivers back in those same 50s is now true nationwide:
"There are no bad drivers in California. All the bad ones are killed off." Illegal aliens excepted, of course. They are all bad drivers.
Precisely my point about the seriousness of crashes, rolando. Seat belt use and the presence of air bags in cars are both way up in recent years, and (I can't prove but strongly suspect) are major factors in the decline of highway deaths. I personally have been involved in at least one crash in which, had I not been wearing a seat belt, I would have most likely been killed or at least seriously injured. But by buckling up, I walked away with barely a scratch. (Not that I believe people should be forced by law to buckle up ... I believe freedom includes the right to do stupid things.)
My point is that we, as intelligent citizens, can do much to improve our own safety on the roads without Big Brother spying on us with cameras or passing laws to tell us what to do "for our own good."
Stay safe out there. Lots of crazies on the road.
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