Auto fatalities that don’t have to happen

Auto accidents that take the lives of children are tragic, but are these tragedies acts of God or of “man”? If human beings are responsible, does culpability lie with individual drivers or with social policy? Residents of Mount Desert Island have had too much opportunity to reflect of such questions. In the last three months three island teen-agers perished in auto crashes. The questions evoked by tragic auto fatalities struck close to home for me. One victim was the daughter of a friend and another a classmate of my daughter.

In most instances, local media simply report the accidents, perhaps with a brief explanation of the immediate cause. WABI has presented broader statistics on driving fatalities and examined ways to impress on new drivers the need for caution.

WABI’s report was a provocative entr?e to a generally neglected topic. Nonetheless, the auto is so deeply embedded in our culture that we often fail to ask more basic questions about a technology that kills so many. During the 20th century auto crashes have killed more Americans than have been killed during all our 20th century wars. I wonder if many of us would regard efforts to impress on military recruits the need to be cautious getting out of foxholes as an adequate response to the carnage of war.

Autos are safer than they once were, but these gains are more the result of public policy and political pressure than of cautionary advice. The auto industry long argued that bad drivers, not the auto itself, caused fatalities. Ralph Nader’s 1965 classic, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” exposed the role of a defective gas tank in Corvair fatalities and galvanized a movement for safer cars. Padded instrument panels, seat belts, and air bags along with stricter laws regarding drunken driving have borne fruit. Auto fatalities fell from about 7 per 100 million miles of driving in 1950 to 1.5 per 100 million miles today.

Unfortunately, the percentage of Americans who drive and the distances they drive per year have also increased dramatically. Total fatalities have declined only slightly. A baby born today has about one chance in 70 of ultimately dying in a traffic crash. Reducing the obscene carnage on our roads will require more than safer vehicles.

Because the auto poses an inordinate psychic challenge, exhortations to obey speed limits and drive more cautiously are unlikely to have much effect. For most of us, driving is our only daily activity where a split second loss of concentration can exact the ultimate penalty. With more of us spending more time in cars, the ante only goes up. As traffic increases, getting places takes longer. The urge or the need to speed grows along with traffic jams and longer working hours. Many of us curse the speeder on our roads, but who among us has not sped to an appointment or to work?

Highway carnage isn’t likely to decline significantly until we reduce our dependence on autos. Policies like Maine’s new “smart growth” initiatives can reintegrate homes, businesses and retail outlets and thus reduce the distances we must travel. Even in our poorly planned suburban communities, alternative transit modes like minibuses and light rail can save both travel time and lives.

Yet these arguments are unlikely to gain traction until we recognize that autos are embedded in our mindset. I offer a few random thoughts on this in the hopes of stimulating more dialogue.

Alternative transit modes are associated with schools, government and parental authority, while cars have become instruments and symbols of freedom. Advertising sends these messages, but by themselves media messages couldn’t carry the day without other forms of support.

Often our first experience with alternative transit is the school bus, but for most children buses are an arena where taunting reigns. School boards can’t or won’t put extra adults on board to monitor student behavior. Thus many parents drive their children to school. By high school, most middle and even working class children drive to school. The bus becomes associated with the poor and the stigma attached to them.

In addition, neither schools nor workplaces provide much time and space for adolescents independent of adult authority. The modern auto with high-tech sound systems becomes the symbol and instrument of adult freedom even while mired in traffic. Advocates of public transit, myself included, need to acknowledge and find space for the freedom and exhilaration the open road and the private vehicle have provided.

As long as the auto is embedded in our psyche and public space, we are likely to hold either individual drivers or God responsible for fatalities. Both perspectives may represent a further tragedy. Death through the vagaries of nature or human error is inevitable in any society. Nonetheless, the auto now exacts an inordinate toll for an ever-decreasing level of health, convenience, mobility and freedom.

John Buell is a political economist from Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail messages to jbuell@acadia.net.