Sign Up For The NMA Email Newsletter
The NMA has been publishing our weekly email newsletter for over a year now and we’ve gotten a strong positive response from many of our members. If you haven’t already signed up to receive the NMA newsletter, please consider doing so.
Even if you’re already a subscriber, please take the time to forward this article to your friends, family and coworkers. We’re always looking for ways to increase readership because we feel that the information that we put out each week is of interest to drivers all across the country.
Enter your email address below and click “Sign Up” to receive the NMA’s weekly newsletter.
It has additional valuable information that you won’t find on this blog. No spam, no third-party offers — just one email a week.
(see the right sidebar)
As a way to show kind of content that you’re signing up for, here’s this week’s email newsletter:
Speeds Are Up, Highway Fatality Rates Are Down
The trend continues. Year after year, the number of U.S. highway deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled declines. There are several reasons for this, of course, including improvements in roadway design, vehicle safety technology, driver education, and emergency roadside medical care. But another factor that can’t be ignored — although some groups try to — is the widespread establishment of higher speed limits that are closer to the 85th percentile goal of traffic engineers. The 85th percentile speed has been proven repeatedly throughout the years to result in a safer, more efficient flow of traffic.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration just released its estimate of 2009 highway statistics. Below is a table of the federal government’s fatality data for every fifth year since 1994. The choice of 1994 was not made because it provides even five-year increments to 2009, although that does provide a nice sense of balance. The National Maximum Speed Limit of 55 mph was fully repealed in 1995, making the prior year the last that many states felt an obligation to the feds to hold their speed limits to 55 mph. Interstate speed limits, particularly in rural areas, have been climbing higher ever since.
| Year | US Traffic Crash Fatalities | Fatality Rate per 100 million Vehicle Miles Traveled | Decrease from Previous Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | 40,716 | 1.73 | - |
| 1999 | 41,717 | 1.55 | 10.4% |
| 2004 | 42,836 | 1.44 | 7.1% |
| 2009 | 33,963 | 1.16 | 19.4% |
The 2009 fatality rate is the lowest recorded total since 1954, which is when collection of such data began. We couldn’t find 1954 statistics, but the traffic fatalities for 1957 were a whopping 5.98 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. We are, on average, over five times safer now when motoring on U.S. highways, even with the advent of cell phones, texting, and other distractions.
In 1994, twenty-two states still had maximum speed limits of 55 mph. By 2010, nineteen states have interstate speed limits of 70 mph (as soon as Virginia joins the fold July 1st), another twelve states post 75 mph limits, and two states have successfully implemented 80 mph speed zones. While it may be hard to isolate the specific beneficial effect of each of the improvements mentioned in the first paragraph, setting speed limits closer to optimum levels belongs among them.
You can find all of our archived email newsletters here.
Thank You Schwinn8 !!!
I recently saw a test of two vehicles with a head on crash. One was a 50 year old car and the other was a 2009 car. The person that would have been in the 50 year old car would have died instantly and the 2009 car was estimated to only have a possible knee injury. With these kind of tests showing how much safter cars of today are, why are we having so many fatalities that we have today? There should be far fewer. I also seem to remeber articles put out by NMA that were against the safety devices of the vehicles of today saying they add too much weight and cost to a vehicle and they are also against manditory seat belts which also save lives. NMA is also against strict DUI laws that cut down the number of fatailites by a significant amount. Where are these things in this article?
Since some people don't understand the point of references, the crash test mentioned is this one: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/In…
As for his comment about fatalities and how "there should be far fewer"… as the NMA has said time and time again (and shows right within this article!), there are fewer fatalities: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
(Shows you how much reading Randy100 is capable of…. *sigh*)
As for the other statements he makes against the NMA… they are worthless, as usual, since he is taking each statement out of context. As a Libertarian, I am against government intervention, so I stand by the NMA when they are against mandatory seat belts and strict DUI laws with faulty equipment. I ALWAYS wear my seat belt, but I will defend anyone's right to do as they wish – if they don't want to do so, and risk more injury, that's their choice. Freedom of choice is what this country is supposed to be about, not a government that tells you what you can and cannot do. Anything else is a dictatorship that starts to look more and more like China.
If it doesn't hurt anyone else, you should be free to do stupid things all you want… Darwinism is a wonderful thing. If you want to buy a car without safety features, knock yourself out. It doesn't hurt me, if my car has the features I want.
That is fine schwinn that you think that everyone should not have to wear seatbelts but the statistics show that immediately after the seatbelt laws went into effect in each state the fatalities dropped a lot. The same thing happened after drunk driving crack downs. If you say everyone should be able to do what they feel like then you can add another thousand or two fatalities to the ones we have now. I am sure you will be happy with that.
You bet I would. It would eliminate the stupid people from the populace… the ones not wearing seat belts.
Should we start regulating food intake now, since obesity kills people? What about alochol? Smoking? Sunbathing? Walking without a helmet and pads?
If people don't want to wear seat belts, what difference does it make to you? You're not everyone's parent (thankfully)… so who are you to tell everyone else what to do? Anything less is a dictatorship… and if that's what you want, then get the hell out of America.
scwinn I guess it does not make any difference to me if people do not buckle up or drink a lot of alcohol and drive or drive 30 mph faster than they should or run red lights other than it kills and hurts a lot of people, it costs us all because of increased insurance costs and other losses and the possibility that it will be a great loss to me because of a loss of a close friend or relative or possibly a great loss to someone else.
You and others do not care about such things and feel like a few seconds of your time is worth more or the great fun it is to fly down the road very fast. It is obvious with the time you and others spend on this site and doing other worthless things that it really is not about any time savings so it is all about your enjoyment of driving fast. Go find a race track to run on.
You are mixing and matching disparate points.
Wearing a seatbelt is your choice. If you know physics, you wear a seatbelt.
You have a right to drink alcohol [it is your body]. You have a right to drive [as upheld by the US Supreme Court, way back] but with rights come responsibility, so 'drink a lot of alcohol and drive' would not be responsible.
'30 mph faster than they should' totally subjective, depends on vehicle, driver, and environmental conditions.
No one is for running red lights. There would be virtually nil if lights were timed right, and intersections were designed correctly.
If you cared about the people you mention, they would appreciate living in a free country, not in a tyrannical oppressive fascistic police state. So you should work to eliminate the pre-tense that the 'do good-ers' use to as cause for the reduction of your liberty & freedom.
George, you for one said it was ok to run a red light. You said it was fine to go through a stale yellow and an early red. That says it is fine to run a red light just so you do not make it seconds afer. You are saying it is fine to run red lights because they are not all timed so it is fine to run any red light. George you want intersections redesigned so that is your excuse to break any law there is. George, some of the intersection have been around for decades and people seemed to get by without breakiing the law because of them. If you say it is fine to do whatever I feel like I guess I can buy a big gun and shoot the people that breaK the laws I do not think they should break because after all we do not live in a police state. George millions of people out there seem to get by without being affected by your so called police state so what is your problem? You want the right to make driving more dangerous. You want to kill people.
As for your excellent drivers that drive fast read the follwoing link:
http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/ts/text/ch09…
George your fast driver should use the follwoing statement as how they drive and this was in the link i posted. "A superior seaman uses his superior judgment to keep out of situations requiring his superior skills" Months ago an NMA member was telling how he was driving in another persons blind spot for many minutes and eventually the other driver started pulling into his lane and he said how his superior driving skills made him miss the accident. A superior driver would not have been driving in a blind area for more than a couple of seconds. So called superior drivers usually overstate their abilities and make our roads less safe.
Stick to a point, as George said… are you willing to concede that if someone else doesn't wear a seatbelt, that it doesn't affect YOUR safety?
schwinn, according to the figures that I see people that are not buckled up costs us many BILLIONS of dollars every year. Since you do not care about lives or injuries I guess you do not care about money either. The accidents without seatbelts costs us a lot more for hospital insurance, life insurance and time off work plus the loss of sons and daughters and fathers and mothers. I guess if you believe we do not need seatbelts required then we would not allow those vicums in the hospital, we would not pay off any life insurance and we would not pay any disability off of work and no home care. If you say people do not need to wear their belts then I guess the answer is if they get in an accident without the belts on we should execute them to save a lot of money.
http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/seat_belts.htm…
That is a valid point, but totally unrelated to the question.
The question is about whether it affects YOUR SAFETY. Try to stick to the point… this is a discussion about seatbelts and safety.
The health care question is a whole different ball of wax, and it too much to get into here – you can barely stick to this point in the first place. Try to stay on point. I didn't ask if affects you in ANY way, I asked if it affected YOUR SAFETY.
Your answers so far admit that it does not affect your safety. Care to admit this?
schwinn, I guess it would not affect my safety if someone else was not wearing their seatbelt except possibly if they were driving the car or were in the car that I was in or if they were thrown out of their car and hit me. Other than those possibilities what is your point? Your are right that speeding and running red lights and driving drunk and reckless driving are hundreds of times more likely to kill or injure me but what is your point. I gave my points that you somewhat agreed with.
So, if someone else not wearing a seatbelt doesn't affect YOUR safety, then you have no right to tell them what to do, from a SAFETY persepective.
Money is certainly an issue, and I don't deny that. But I will not get into that conversation here – we have plenty of other things to discuss that are more relevant on this forum first.
That being said, the existing laws are written as "safety" measures. Do you now see how this is just plain lying?
If they want to pass laws addressing the money-issue of seatbelts, then they should do so… but don't hide it under the guise of "safety".
Ok schwinn I get what you are trying to say but you are wrong again. It is a saftey thing also. It is a fact that people particularly younger drivers think they are invincible and nothing can ever happen to them so they drive faster than average, they do not wear seatbelts, they drive more recklessly, they have more accidents and it goes on and on. You are saying the young people particularly have the right to choose to die early even though they think it could never happen to them. You are saying it is not about saftey? Explain that.
I think that everyone should be required to wear their seatbelts except for NMA members. You guys are probably too stupid to know how to buckle up in the first place.
One more thing that I left out schwinn, if the person in the 2009 car in the link you showed was not wearing his seat belt then he would be dead also but you would support him in his death even if he was your teenage son or daughter.
How do you go from 'might have sustained an injury to his left foot' to being dead, just from not wearing the seat belt? [I did not see the seat belt pretension activate]
No, the progressive crumple zone has nothing to do with keeping peak force down.
No, the SRS system doesn't help at all.
No, the digressive force limiting collapsible steering column does not help.
No, whiplash reducing bucket seats do not help.
George, I and everyone else does not have a clue what you were trying to say in most of your post. As for not wearing your seatbelt and being dead, most every crash analysis says that in a severe crash. Ina severe crash you fly through the windshield or worse because there is nothing else to slow you down when your car does drasticaly
Does not help with what? What peak force are you talking about?
DO YOU SPEAK AMERICAN ENGLISH?
Please explain how you think the sustained trauma will increase from a potential foot injury to DEATH, just from not wearing a seat belt in a modern car.
Hundreds of accident investigations have shown that if the person would have had their seatbelts on they would have remained in an area where they would not have been injured but instead many are ejected out of the vehicle or smash into a part of the vehicle and they sustain major head trama. This just does not happen or is very rare when you are restrained by seatebelts. George, I guess you think we should remove seatbelts from all planes and cars and racecars because you feel that they show now benefit?
No, I think that the seat belts that are in most cars/trucks are too ineffectual.
I want a 4th point of contact, via a belt that crosses the other clavicle-over the thorax-and finishes at the other side of the pelvis.
In commercial aviation, the lap belt in combination with compartmentalization is good enough.
In racing, five or six point harness are plenty, especially operating in tandem with the HANS device.
But you didn't answer why/how you think that, in this case, the person would die as opposed to suffering minor foot pain from an offset head-on collision.
George it was only estimated that the persons would have a foot injury and that the other person in the older car would have died instantly. I do not know that the person would have been killed without seatbelts but they were more likely by many times to be killed and if not killed have major injuries which in some cases is almost as bad as bing killed. I personally know a people with and without seatbelts on. the one that did have their belt on only had major bruises from the belt but no head injuries and the two that I personally knew without belts on were killed. If you take personal experiences along with the thousands of other investigations together and you deduce that the person had a very good chance of being killed.
"On the other hand, the driver of the Malibu might have sustained an injury to his left foot, analysis of test data showed, but otherwise emerged unscathed."
Analysis by trained people, using actual data from instrumented crash test dummies, as opposed to your wild ass conjecture.
'One more thing that I left out schwinn, if the person in the 2009 car in the link you showed was not wearing his seat belt then he would be dead also but you would support him in his death even if he was your teenage son or daughter.'
The force limiting function of the seat belt can be seen in action.
The impact speed into the airbag is greater when you aren't wearing a seatbelt, but in this case it would not be a fatal accident.
That is fine George. If you do not think seat belts are really needed you do not need to use them. 10s of thousands of people got by fine without them. Their relatives gave them a proper burial.
Yes, I would because obviously I didn't teach them to wear their seatbelt. Would I be upset, of course… but would I blame the laws of this country? Or the police who should have pulled them over? No… that's what's called personal responsibility.
Makes sense schwinn. Just do not say how low the death rate is now compared to the past without adding the increased seatbelt use with the change of the seatbelt laws. More peope are buckeling up and that is a fact you can not dispute because it is a fact and the affect is less deaths and injuries that saves us both a lot of money.
But, according to you, we're also texting all the time, and hence INCREASING our fatality rates… bottom line is, the net is an improvement, as shown by the statistics.
I'll accept that maybe it's not a wash, and maybe we could do better. But it's up to you to prove it. It's not my job to prove you wrong all the time – where are your statistics to prove that seatbelt usage increased "that much" to cause this level of improvement?
You can blabber all you want, but without data to support your statements, all you have is an opinion, which is worthless, according to you. After all, you won't believe anything any of us says (ie, our opinions) so why should we be expected to believe you?
At least we provide data to support our statements, where you just make statements with no data to support it. For example, what if I said that police cars running radar actually INCREASE accidents in that area, because everyone slows down unexpectedly. Makes sense, doesn't it? But are you going to believe me, just because I said it? No, you'd expect me to show some data supporting it… so how about you do the same?
schwinn is not up to me to prove anything when it is a well know fact that putting on a seatbelt makes you a lot safer. Driving slower rather than faster allows you more time to keep from getting into an accident. Running through a red light there is a far greater chance you will hit someone or they will hit you. If you drink and drive you have a far greater chance of being in an accident. All of these things are common sense things but it is impossible to prove such things when if you show someone dozens of reports they do not believe them and if it is not in a report that you believe in you will not believe that it takes longer to stop if you are driving faster. It is hard to give someone common sense when they do not have room in their head for it. An example of the stupidity on this site, I told George that too high of speed may have caused certain accidents. He said it was not the speed but weight of the vehicles that crushed the people. You can not get it in his head that if the driver was driving slower they may have been able to avoid the accident in the first place.
"Driving slower… allows you more time…" Ok, let's explore this specifically, and one-at-a time. Try to keep on point. If you are doing 55 on my section of 128 here, where everyone else is doing 75. Are you improving safety on the road? Aren't you actually increasing the closing-speed of the vehicle behind you, and thereby making it harder for them to avoid an accident?
schwinn I would guess that since your speed limit is 55 mph then you are around an area of heavy traffic near a large city. If you are all driving 75 mph then that is a stupid thing but you are right if you are the ONLY one driving 55 mph then it is more dangerous to do so. The fact is that if you all were driving 55 mph then you would be a lot safer but since it is dangerous for police to stop drivers in heavy traffic stupid drivers know that and drive too fast. Even Germany has speed limits in heavier traffic areas.
Continued
Since I do some skiing I have driven in some mountain highways particularly near Denver and west. They have drivers that drive very fast there also even when the mountain highway is snow packed. Driving fast is stupid but a lot of them do it and you often hear that the roads are closed during those road conditions because of 30 to 50 car pileups. Whenever I drive in such conditions I often stay in the slow lane with the trucks and let the idiots go. There usually is only two lanes. If you are driving when the pack is driving fast you still can be in the slower group and do not promote or instigate faster speeds. You also would never get a ticket.