American Views on Safety
Page 24
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MUCH can often be learnt from other countries and this applies with some force to experience with traffic accidents and their prevention. Mr. Fred B. Lautzenhiser, consulting engineer of the International Harvester Company of Chicago. Illinois, digressed for a time from his normal occupation to study how, to use his own phrase, "accidents are engineered."
He accepts a view that was recently stated in an American paper, "traffic accidents are not accidents and that it is actually detrimental to safety efforts to classify them as such." In the U.S.A. road accidents have been considered as 75 per cent, the fault of the individual, 15 per cent. attributed to faulty vehicles and 10 per cent. to road conditions, but he believes that anyone using a defective vehicle or not making every allowance for adverse road conditions is committing an overt act and definitely engineering a tragedy.
Suppose a man is driving an old vehicle on which the brakes require frequent adjustment, can it, he asks, be called an accident and the blame placed on the equipment when the brakes fail to stop him from 60 m.p.h.? Can another, who persists in running at 50 m.p.h. despite a "winding road " sign, claim the same if his vehicle jumps a curve into a ravine? No! The vehicle or road is, at most, only a contributing factor, if caution be called for and weather conditions affecting safe driving be self evident.
Vehicles "Give " Warnings Motor -vehicles seldom go out of order without warning and self preservation -alone should demand periodical checking and repair. Blame should not be laid on a vehicle when it turns over following a burst when the badly worn tyres should have been scrapped long before. In one accident report after another, there are found details of an unsafe act or violation of the law. Thousands of accidents which occur when there is no apparent mechanical or road defect, would be avoided if people would drive and walk with courtesy. caution, confidence and common sense. According to Mr. Lautzenhiser, it would be better to remove " accident " from the terminology of traffic safety, for it is inclined to lull people into the belief that such happenings are inevitable and the fault of no lone. There can be no more mistaken or fatal belief, for they are definitely engineered by ignorance, lack of skill, negligence, discourtesy or violation of the law by the individual involved. A motor vehicle is an inanimate object and can do only what its driver causes it to do; it cannot go to a competent mechanic of its own volition, nor refuse to travel when it is dangerous to do so.
Trucks Unfairly Blamed A deplorable fact is that reports of accidents in which motor trucks are involved, even when they are in no way at fault, are classified as "truck accidents," which is definitely unfair.
In America, fewer than a quarter of the total road accidents occurring during darkness have involved more than half the traffic deaths, and the mortality during the evening rush hours is 100 per cent. greater in winter when it is dark than in summer when it is light. Even 35 m.p.h. may be a safe or suicide speed depending entirely on the conditions. Ice on the windscreen, strong sunlight in the eyes, fog, heavy traffic and schools are danger signals to the -careful driver.
Few American drivers deliberately disobey a red traffic signal, but many accidents are caused by "jumping the gun" during the change periods. A good driver should keep not only his eye, but his whole mind on the road ahead; by mentally anticipating the worst, he does not permit his attention to be diverted.