Traffic Safety

Book Description "Traffic Safety" applies the methods of science to better understand one of the world’s most pressing public health problems. More than a million people are killed annually in traffic worldwide. This 2004 book is even better than the author’s 1991 classic "Traffic Safety and the Driver". The present book covers many safety policy topics. "Traffic Safety" goes to the heart of the problem, with unconstrained analyses of the inadequacies of government in one of its chief responsibilities – to protect life. A dramatic development since the earlier book is that the United States has fallen far behind other countries in traffic safety. Prior to the mid 1960s, the US had the world’s safest traffic. By 2002 it had dropped from first to sixteenth place in deaths per registered vehicle, and from first to tenth place in deaths for the same distance of travel. Over 200,000 more Americans were killed in traffic than would have died if the US had matched the safety progress in such better performing countries as Britain, Canada, or Australia. This topic is treated in detail, and explanations are offered for the ongoing US failure.