« Portland Streetcar suits this 'livable community' | Main | California's ports: transportation leadership at work »

July 02, 2009

Comments

I'm excited to hear your comments on the "behavioral factor" tomorrow. Driver training and better enforcement of the rules of the road like proper lane usage, signaling, and red lights are the biggest opportunities for safety improvement in my area.

The study is pretty vague about which roadway features contribute to crashes.

You should realize that it is actually the difference between the perceived risk and the actual risk that contributes to crash rates. Thus, to the extent that road features can be made more forgiving _without_ making the road appear safer, crash rate or severity will go down. However, improvements to a road which lead to higher speeds or driver inattention because the driving is "easier" will have an unpredictable effect on the crash statistics.

"The report concludes that more than half of U.S. highway fatalities are related to deficient roadway conditions"

Yet the report makes no difference between an interstate and a residential street. What is good for an interstate is horrible for a residential street.

What is mind-boggling to me is the sheer crash costs of driving. If you divide the comprehensive crash costs - $498.8b / yr by the 3 trillion VMT / year, you get a crash cost of over 16 cents per mile. That's higher than the per-mile cost of gasoline!! And way higher than the per-mile cost of congestion.

Really, is there any safety treatment that is good enough to make up for this huge drain on our economy? It makes the numbers for (extremely safe) public transit look much more attractive.

This is definitely true about road conditions. Anything that makes driving easier makes driving safer. If you have to swerve around a pot hole or take a bump too hard, it can definitely affect your driving. If you're not paying attention, you could easily get into an accident.

As a limo driver who is on the road most of the time, I can appreciate construction to fixing up the roads.

The comments to this entry are closed.

Subscribe

  • E-mail updates
    E-mail updates
  • RSS feed
    RSS feed
Add to Technorati Favorites