Goal of zero traffic deaths: Is that even reasonably conceivable?

By Taylor & Ring | October 19, 2016

What is the antidote to the “sharp uptick in roadway deaths” that a recent national news piece notes have been occurring in the United States over the past couple years?

Likely, there is no such thing, at least not in any absolute sense. As long as human beings sit behind the wheel and navigate vehicles in California and across the country, serious injuries and deaths will continue to occur in high numbers. People are fallible, and on-the-road mistakes often yield tragic outcomes.

Notwithstanding the reams of hard data that point to a seemingly intractable problem in materially reducing adverse road outcomes ( to wit: an estimated 35,0000-plus fatalities occurred nationally last year, the biggest annually spike since 2008), safety regulators express sentiments that are impressively optimistic regarding the future “state of the road” in America.

Here’s their perceived bottom line on that, as set forth in a national campaign called Road to Zero: a goal of no traffic deaths anywhere in the country within 30 years.

You read that right. Regulators voice hopes that that state and national roads will be remarkably kind to motorists (and, by extension, bicyclists and pedestrians) in upcoming years.

Road to Zero is “achievable and feasible,” says Mark Rosekind, the ranking official of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

So-called “baby steps” — educational and marketing campaigns, heightened seat-belt enforcement, basic infrastructure improvements and so forth — are expected to be followed in upcoming years with material high-tech innovations that will truly render autonomous vehicles accident-proof.

Although the goal is obviously laudatory, safety officials are under no misgivings that realizing it will be anything other than maximally difficult.

Still, notes one regulator, “it is the only acceptable vision.”

Posted in Car Accidents, Legal News