Tony Harding wrote:
> The New York Times
> July 22, 2007
> Motoring
> Safety First? True Once, but U. S. Now Lags in Road Deaths
> By TANYA MOHN
>
> DRIVING has never been safer. Cars, which once had just one air bag, can
> now have six or more, and there are crumple zones to protect occupants
> in a crash and electronic stability control to avoid crashes in the
> first place. There are run-flat tires and antilock brakes. The rate of
> highway fatalities has plummeted since 1970, when the United States led
> the world in road safety.
>
> Still, despite its head start and that cocoon of technology, the nation
> has steadily slipped behind other countries, becoming comparatively one
> of the most dangerous places to drive in the industrialized world.
>
> The United States ranks 42nd of the 48 countries measured in the number
> of fatalities per capita, according to the Organization for Economic
> Cooperation and Development and the International Transport Forum.
> Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Japan all did significantly better.
>
> And in what many safety experts consider a more precise measure,
> fatalities per distance driven, the United States was No. 1 in 1970 with
> the lowest death rate among industrialized countries reporting data. It
> now ranks 11th, with some countries reporting rates that are 25 percent
> lower.
>
> “Here we are, probably the richest country in the world,” said Barbara
> L. Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety
> Association, which represents state highway safety offices. “Why are
> other countries doing a better job than we are?”
>
> Safety experts said the reasons were many. One, they said, was
> inadequate driver training. Some countries require that teenagers have
> 100 hours behind the wheel before they receive a license, compared to
> about 6 in the United States.
>
> But expert after expert said the real problem was one of culture. With
> personal freedom being a cornerstone of the United States, many states
> are loath to pass legislation that curtails them, even when it comes to
> road safety. So while the governments of other countries can easily pass
> laws to make driving safer, like a national ban on hand-held cellphone
> use, those laws here are left up to the states to impose, and that is
> often not so easy.
>
> New Hampshire, for example, is the only state with no seat belt law for
> adults, and in May its state Senate rejected a bill that would have
> mandated the use of belts.
>
> “The citizens of New Hampshire don’t like to be told by anyone else what
> to do,” said State Senator Robert E. Clegg Jr.
>
> Fred Wegman, managing director of the National Institute for Road Safety
> Research in the Netherlands, said attitudes were different in Europe.
> There, he said, safety is not just about the individual, but is the
> responsibility of society as a whole. “European countries fundamentally
> pay more political attention to road safety,” he said.
>
> Allan F. Williams, a road safety consultant who had been the chief
> scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, compared the
> United States with Australia. “Here there is not a lot of attention or
> money” paid to road safety, Dr. Williams said. “We don’t see it as a
> national priority.”
>
> In Australia, “the government is more willing to intervene to protect
> the health and safety of the community,” he said.
>
> Peter Sweatman, who is Australian and director of the University of
> Michigan Transportation Research Institute, said Australians were
> willing to give up a little freedom in exchange for better safety.
>
> “There is a willingness to have strong and targeted enforcement,
> therefore a little bit of pain is justified,” he said. “It’s a business
> management approach to saving lives. It’s a relentless focus. I don’t
> see the same kind of commitment here.”
>
> Bella Dinh-Zarr, the North American director of Make Roads Safe, a
> nonprofit organization based in London, said other countries had
> stricter laws, better enforcement, more accessible public
> transportation, greater awareness, public support and more rigorous
> training and licensing standards.
>
> “We’re moving in the right direction, but other countries have moved
> even further,” she said.
>
> Statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
> Development, a research organization financed by industrialized nations
> based in Paris, show that while the United States reduced road deaths
> from 1970 to 2005, the latest year the numbers were available, deaths
> fell even more in Western Europe. Sweden and Britain each reported about
> 35 deaths for every billion kilometers driven in 1970, more than the 30
> in the United States. But in 2005 both European countries reported about
> 6 deaths for every billion kilometers, compared with 9 in the United
> States.
>
> Seat belt laws are one example of the different approaches. About half
> the states do not allow the police to stop drivers solely for not using
> them.
>
> “The U.S. is the only country in the world that has a secondary seat
> belt law,” said Dr. Dinh-Zarr of Make Roads Safe.
>
> Training and licensing standards overseas also reflect some major
> differences.
>
> “The standards of both training and testing are far below acceptable
> levels in this country,” said Eddie Wren, president of Advanced Drivers
> of America, a company based in Williamsville, N.Y.
>
> “In some states the driver being tested does not even leave the parking
> lot and averages about eight minutes; in Britain the road test is 40 to
> 50 minutes, occurs on different types of roads, and has more complex
> tasks,” said Mr. Wren, who was a traffic police officer in England.
>
> But experts agree that education is not the most effective way to reduce
> traffic injuries among teenagers.
>
> “There is a gap between what we know and what we do,” said Dr. Williams,
> the safety consultant. “Driver education and training do not work by
> themselves, but have a role when coupled with hands-on, supervised
> driving time and strong graduated driver licensing laws.”
>
> Almost all state programs could benefit from strengthening their
> requirements, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
> Prevention, because most driver education programs require only about
> six hours of on-road driving experience.
>
> “Some other countries require 100 hours of behind-the-wheel experience,”
> said David A. Sleet, associate director for science at the centers’
> Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention. He said that most experts
> agreed that behind-the-wheel training should be a minimum of 30
> hours.But one area where the United States continues to excel is in
> vehicle design.
>
> David Ward, director general of the FIA Foundation for the Automobile
> and Society, a nonprofit based in London, said the United States had
> taken the lead in installing electronic stability control, a technology
> invented in Europe that helps prevent skids. It is considered by some to
> be the greatest life-saving technology since the seat belt and is
> expected to reduce single-vehicle crashes of cars by 34 percent and
> sport utility vehicles by 59 percent, according to the National Highway
> Traffic Safety Administration. It will be mandatory in all passenger
> cars in the United States by model year 2012.
>
> “The U.S. has been instrumental in establishing a global standard,” Mr.
> Ward said. “We’re pushing Europe to match what the Americans are doing.”
>
> Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company


let's cut through all the obfuscation and get to the facts:

1. suv's are much more unstable than cars.
2. heavier vehicles have longer braking distances.

address those problems and crash stats will improve.

next?