WASHINGTON — Facing a surge in traffic fatalities, the Department of Transportation on Thursday will reveal a new roadway safety strategy to be paid for in part by the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Though the department has long identified safety as its “North Star,” the 42-page plan to be released by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, is described as a “paradigm shift” by one DOT official.
It comes after a sobering statistic: Even though far fewer drivers were on the road in 2020, traffic fatalities spiked, with some 38,680 dying in motor vehicle crashes that year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It was the highest number since 2007 and a 7.2 percent increase over the 2019 level of 36,096 fatalities.
The safety agency estimated 20,160 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes in the first half of 2021, the latest period for which figures are available. Those deaths were an increase of 18.4 percent over the first half of 2020.
“The status quo is unacceptable, and it is preventable,” the report said.
The report comes a week after the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board said a Department of Transportation statistic that 94 percent of serious crashes are solely due to driver error is “misleading” because it didn’t acknowledge other factors that played a part in the rise in traffic fatalities.
In fact, the report finds that the transportation system itself can be designed and operated to contribute to crashes, such as roads designed to encourage speed.
“We’re shifting our safety messaging to recognize a safe system approach,” said a senior DOT official, adding that while humans make mistakes, “roadway design strongly influences how people use the roadways.” The official said the department is recognizing that “there are many factors that contribute to death and serious injury, therefore there are many strategies we have to deploy all together.”
The official acknowledged that it will be hard to bend the curve toward fewer fatalities.
“We have a pretty monumental task here,” the official said. “It doesn’t serve us well to diminish how difficult the road is ahead, no pun intended.”
Five goals
The plan is divided into five goals: promoting safer driving, ensuring safer roads, encouraging safer vehicles, reducing speed limits and improving emergency care at crash sites.
The plan calls for using some of the $13 billion in new spending in bipartisan infrastructure law to study how best to encourage safe driving behavior.
It would work to ensure safer roads, including by finalizing updates to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which creates consistent signage for highways and roads, and beginning a cycle of updating that manual every four years.
It would also work to improve state performance on achieving safety performance targets, considering revisions to guidance and regulations that would ensure that states set goals that reduce fatalities over time. Some states have targets that actually allow more traffic fatalities.
“We’re not out to punish states that miss their targets,” said one official. “We’re out to save lives.”
The plan would update consumer information on vehicle safety through the New Car Assessment Program, which analyzes auto safety features. It would initiate a new rulemaking to require automatic emergency braking technologies on new passenger vehicles and heavy trucks.
It would consider a rulemaking effort to establish motor vehicle safety standards to require passenger motor vehicles be manufactured with advanced impaired driving prevention technology — a proposal that is actually a requirement of the bipartisan infrastructure law.
And it would require manufacturers to provide notification when there is a crash involving automated driving systems, creating a public database of information.
The department also proposes actions to enable safer speeds, working through the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices to help provide a range of methods for setting speed limits.
The department plans to revise guidance and regulations to take into account the safety of all roadway users by encouraging the setting of context-appropriate speed limits and creating roadways that help to “self-enforce” speed limits.
Post-crash care initiatives include developing an outreach plan for emergency medical personnel for on-site safety and traffic incident training, and improving delivery of emergency services by shortening ambulance response times, in collaboration with the Federal Interagency Committee on Emergency Medical Services and the National Emergency Medical Services Advisory Council.
Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, praised the strategy but said implementation will be key. She stressed that minimum performance standards for automatic emergency braking and for impaired driving prevention technology in new vehicles would be “lifesaving game changers.”
“The DOT’s commitment to zero fatalities means zero room for hesitation and inaction,” she said.
