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One approach to reducing vehicle collisions that wasnt mentioned much in the discussion so far are road rules and design. It is unrealistic to expect perfect responses from human drivers, or even compliance with rules. Also, human attention is severely limited (there are only so many things a human can keep track of, especially for extended periods of time). In other countries(e.g. Europe, which as mentioned further down had a more severe drop in traffic fatalities), traffic rules are often very different. For example, right turning on a red light (which can lead to collosions, hit pedestrians, Etc.) and the rather confusing right of way situation (there is no general rule for right of way, stop signs are in the order in which people arrive -- which is hard to figure out for people. Right before left or yield signage doesn't require looking at every other lane, but allows the situation to be resolved statically). There are also cleverer incentives, such as dynamically times traffic lights that give you a 'green wave' if you're going the speed limit -- so people are conditioned to drive at normal speeds. Many traffic lights here even in well off cities seem to be completely unsynchronized(or they all turn green at the same time) training drivers to speed through. Similarly, being originally from Germany (which has no speed limits in large parts of the highway network, and higher speed limits in other places), passing on the right (which means you have to be aware of twice as many lanes which could cut into yours) and the focus on enforcing speed limits and not following distance seems odd. 60 vs 70 or perhaps even 80 isn't going to make that much difference when avoiding a crash, but having half a second vs two or three seconds to react is substantial. I have heard many anecdotes of people getting expensive speeding tickets for going 80, not one for tailgating. At the end of the day, there will be collisions, and there will also always be a human factor in them, however no matter how draconian we make the penalties or how much we shift blame (or even not assign it), people will still drive, and we should spend some time thinking about how to make realistic driving conditions safe. |
A car driving at 70 has twice as much kinetic energy than at 50; and modern cars are quite good at protecting people up until they can't - many of fatal crashes would be just property damage if the impact happened, say, 20 km/h slower; while tailgating accidents don't kill much people at all.