Bad Roads and the US Department of Transportation About to Eclipse Bad Drivers as the Greatest Danger to Our Safety
01/08/08 08:00 Filed in: Distracted drivingPoor Practices
PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- In a time when we struggle as a nation to reign in terrorism and conduct wars in Iraq and Afghanistan maybe we should also focus on threats to our safety here, too. Apathy and kowtowing to special interests by our own USDOT is responsible for more deaths and injures each year than all our enemies combined! Despite its public campaigns that blame everything on driver behavior, an astonishing one in four (10,000 plus) of our highway fatalities now are directly attributable to its own negligence and refusal to implement Congress' safety mandates, and it's only going to get worse!
Newly promulgated USDOT regulations purport to rid itself forever of critical safety oversight responsibilities, accountability for the catastrophic human consequences of its conduct, and inhibit due process, too.
Why did they return us to unsafe practices and try to eliminate the due process foundations of our traffic laws? Simply stated, there are no public safety constituencies left advancing the greater public good anymore. They've all devolved into pretext based self-interest, revenue and/or empire-building entities.
Even more incredulous, these regulatory changes take us full circle back to the state of anarchy in traffic control that was the very rationale for the USDOT's establishment in "The Highway Safety Act of 1966." The USDOT's charter was to end the pervasive confusion and accidents caused by a patchwork of tens of thousands of self interest regulatory fiefdoms, each with their own unique traffic laws, expectations, and unsafe practices based on local whim.
For safety to occur, we, together as a nation, must take responsibility for all safety issues within a roadway right of way, require uniformity of expectation, and demand that only verified best practices are applied. Therefore, we must immediately reinstate Congress' one nation, one standard safety mandate that all traffic control in the nation have a uniform basis-in-fact determination, appearance, expectation and application on all roads and bike paths open to public travel, regardless of state lines, jurisdiction type, or classification.
Just imagine how many thousands of lives would have been spared if those responsible for the safety of our roadways had actually conducted the required periodic safety audits and engineering studies! How many innocent victims didn't have to die if the USDOT actually exercised access management or implemented hazard mitigation programs and assured that all traffic control met the needs of the traffic?
Help us stop this insanity! Call your Congressmen and Senators. The law already exists. We just need to make the USDOT obey it.
CONTACT Boilerplate.
The Best Highway Safety Practices Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing best highway safety practices. The Institute was founded in 2004, in Portland, Oregon by professionals who specialize in highway safety issues. Best Practice is defined by those practices that have been verified by field research and are peer reviewed before adoption. The Institute focuses on education, research, best practices and their application, and assuring public policy is founded in best practice.
Source: Best Highway Safety Practices Institute
CONTACT: Chad Dornsife, +1-858-673-1926, or Jeffrey Boly, +1-503-223-5447
Web site: http://www.bhspi.org/
NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information details of any statements made, or if you need an opinion on a particular matter email us at info@bhspi.org.
SOURCE Best Highway Safety Practices Institute
-0- 01/08/2007
/CONTACT: Chad Dornsife, Director of Best Highway Safety Practices Institute, Portland, +1-503-223-5447, or Reno, +1-775-721-2423, or San Diego, +1-858-673-1926, or Skype, cdornsife/
/Web site: http://www.bhspi.org/