More than 20,000 people died on American roads from January to June, the highest total for the first half of any year since 2006. Road deaths in the United States have risen more than 10% over the past decade, even With declines in most parts of the United States. developed world. In the European Union, whose population is one-third larger than America’s, traffic deaths fell by 36% between 2010 and 2020, to 18,800. This downward trend is no coincidence: European regulators have pushed carmakers to build Safer vehicles for pedestrians and cyclists, and governments regularly modify road designs after an accident to reduce the chances of it recurring.
But in the United States, responsibility for road safety falls largely on the individual behind the wheel, riding a bike, or crossing the street. US departments of transportation, law enforcement agencies, and the media often assert that most traffic accidents – in fact, 94% of them, according to the most widely reported statistics – are due solely to human error. Blaming road users’ bad decisions means that no one can stop them. This would enable car companies to deflect attention from their decisions to add heft and height to SUVs and trucks that make up an increasingly large share of vehicle sales, and allow traffic engineers to escape scrutiny of dangerous street designs.
A recently passed infrastructure bill will encourage some safety improvements, including technology to prevent drunk people from driving a car and better crash testing to address risks to people outside the car. But even as the federal government prepares to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars to road work, Americans’ fundamental misconception of traffic deaths as merely a cornucopia of individual errors will go largely uncorrected.
In 2015, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation, published a two-page memo declaring that “the critical cause, the final event in the causal chain of accidents, was assigned to the driver in ’94.” % of accidents.” The memo, which was based on NHTSA’s own analysis of the accidents, offered a key warning: “Although the critical cause is an important part of the description of the events leading up to the accident, it is not intended to be construed as the cause of the accident.” “
To understand what NHTSA was trying to say, imagine the following scenario: It’s a foggy day, and the driver of an SUV is traveling along the road at the posted speed limit of 40 mph. The limit then drops to 25 as the road approaches town – but the road’s lanes do narrow (which would naturally force the driver to brake), and the only sign announcing the minimum speed limit is partially obstructed. Oblivious to the change, the driver continues at 40. While entering the city, a pedestrian crosses the road at an intersection without a stop sign. Driver hits pedestrian.
According to the federal government’s definition, the “critical cause” of this hypothetical accident—the final event in the causal chain—is the error of the driver who was speeding at the time of the collision. The police will certainly hold him responsible. But this ignores many other factors: foggy weather obscured the driver’s vision; Faulty traffic engineering failed to force him to slow down as he approached the intersection; The weight of the SUV made the impact force much greater than that of a sedan.
The authors of the 2015 NHTSA report were aware of these contributing factors. But their disclaimer that the “critical reason” behind the accident is not the same as the “cause” has been largely ignored. Even a page on the agency’s website summarizes the message by saying, “94% of serious crashes are due to human error.”
Striving to find a single cause for an accident is a fundamentally flawed approach to road safety, but it underpins much of traffic enforcement and accident prevention in the United States. After a collision, the police file a report, noting who violated traffic laws and ignoring factors such as road design and vehicles in general. Insurance companies are also designed to hold someone accountable. Drivers are not the only ones facing such provisions. After an accident, a pedestrian may be blamed for crossing a street with no crosswalk (even if the nearest crosswalk is a quarter-mile away), and a cyclist may be cited for not wearing a helmet (even though a protected bike lane would have prevented the accident altogether). ). News stories reinforce these narratives, as the stories are limited to the driver who was speeding or the pedestrian who crossed the light.
In fact, journalists have spread the misleading 94% line on influential platforms including The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, and The Washington Post. Research institutions such as the University of Michigan and the University of Idaho have done so. Even former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao helped sow confusion, as did transportation departments in states like Illinois, Utah and Texas.
“The 94 percent line is a recurring reference at every state (Department of Transportation) conference I’ve ever attended,” Jennifer Homendy, head of the National Transportation Safety Board, told me. When Michigan Department of Transportation spokesman Jeff Cranson speculated on a 2019 podcast that human error is actually responsible for more than 95 percent of accidents, Timothy Gates, an engineering professor at Michigan State University, responded, “Yes, I agree with that, there is “Very few accidents have been caused by it.” Because of a vehicle defect or road defect, much of it is actually human error. This is a relevant perspective for engineers who design vehicles and roads.
If the responsibility falls to the driver, automakers feel less pressure to make life-saving safety features standard across their models — which many of them don’t. Last year, Consumer Reports found that the average car buyer would have to pay $2,500 for a blind-spot detection system. Pedestrian detection technology was standard on 13 of the 15 most popular vehicle models — but it’s not available on one model and part of a $16,000 optional package on another.
With the responsibility falling on those directly involved in an accident, it is not surprising that many highway safety efforts revolve around educational campaigns, assuming that if people were just more careful, we would all be fine. Officials at NHTSA and state DOTs are pouring millions of dollars into these programs, but their benefits appear modest at best. Officials “see their role as trying to persuade people on the roads to make smarter decisions,” Seth Lajeunesse, a senior research associate at the University of North Carolina’s Center for Highway Safety Research, told me. “Wear your seatbelt, don’t drink while driving, and signal appropriately. I think it’s misleading. After all, who’s going to address structural problems, if it’s just stupid people on the road?”
For now, the idea that human error causes almost all car accidents is a useful talking point for makers of self-driving vehicle technology, which is supposed to prevent such mistakes. Companies, including General Motors, Google, and startup Aurora, have touted the 94 percent statistic in promotional materials, press releases, and even Securities and Exchange Commission filings. But as Phil Koopman, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, points out, autonomous systems will make their own mistakes down the road. Self-driving vehicles are not expected to reduce crashes by more than 50 percent, even in the best-case scenario. The future of fully autonomous driving is still at least decades away, suggesting that self-driving vehicles will not reverse the rising death toll on American roads for many years to come — if they do at all.
With the infrastructure bill signed into law, the federal government has an opportunity to rethink its approach and messaging. Eliminating the dangerous 94% myth would be a good start; Downplaying pointless public relations campaigns regarding traffic safety would also help. Encouraging state and local transportation agencies – not just law enforcement – to investigate accidents, which is what New York City is doing now, would be better. What we desperately need is a rethink of how automakers, traffic engineers, and community members — as well as the traveling public — bear responsibility together for saving some of the thousands of lives lost annually on America’s roads. Blaming human error alone is convenient, but it puts all Americans at greater risk.
