I was up late last night reading a lengthy article about the engineering perspective on automotive safety issues. It was worth the read to find out how “they” think.
From The New Yorker‘s May 4, 2015 edition:
The Engineer’s Lament
Two ways of thinking about automotive safety.
BY MALCOLM GLADWELL
I could quote lots of things from that article, but I will start with this one from David Friedman, Deputy Administrator of NHTSA:
“I would argue that our nation has a low tolerance for fatalities associated with airplanes, the N.H.T.S.A.’s David Friedman told me, when we spoke late last year. In part because of that, fatalities are very, very low from aircraft. Also in part because of that, the F.A.A. has close to fifty thousand employees—an order of magnitude more employees than we do. We have six hundred. To deal with ten thousand people who are dying from drunk driving or ten thousand dying because they didn’t wear a seat belt, or the three thousand dying from distracted driving, or the four thousand dying because they are pedestrians or bicyclists and they are hit by a car. That’s why the Administration has been asking Congress for more resources for us. With more resources, we could save more lives. And each time the answer from Congress has been no. Zero.”
(Don’t forget the four thousand dying per year from truck crashes.)
That’s what I would like to become prevalent in our nation: A Low Tolerance For Crash Fatalities. An Outcry at the Rampant* Carnage on our Roads.
* Flourishing or spreading UNCHECKED
