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New IIHS study reveals the effects of technology and safe driving

According to a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), U.S. drivers are safer on the road thanks to legislation requiring automakers to create, install, and improve active and passive safety technologies. Unfortunately, however, drivers seem to be relying a bit too heavily on these newer technologies without sufficiently modifying their driving behaviors, like properly using seatbelts, not drinking and driving, and speeding. Without new vehicle safety technology, IIHS found highway fatalities would have started climbing in 1994.

Safer Cars Save Lives

"Death rates per vehicle and per mile have been going down for decades, and they still are. This study shows why," says Institute president Adrian Lund. "In recent years it's the vehicles, not better drivers or improved roadways. The study reveals not only the importance of the vehicle design changes and the kinds of vehicles motorists are choosing to drive but, on the downside, the loss of momentum for effective traffic safety policies on belt use, alcohol-impaired driving, and speeding."

For instance, seatbelt usage has increased to about 82 percent of U.S. drivers according to government statistics, up from only 58 percent in 1994. Sounds good, but seatbelt utilization in the U.S. is still way behind that of other countries, like Canada, where seatbelt use is at nearly 100 percent of all drivers. The federal government calculates that each percentage point boost in seatbelt use saves 270 lives per year. Following that equation, by increasing belt use to 100 percent the U.S. could reduce its annual highway fatalities by 4,860 lives.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data shows that in 2005 alone, there were 16,885 alcohol-related fatalities in traffic crashes, a figure nearly unchanged during the last decade. NHTSA statistics show that the percentage of all motor vehicle fatalities where one driver had a blood alcohol level of 0.08 declined sharply from 1985 to 1995, from 46 percent to 36 percent. Yet, overall, very little progress was made in the next decade, and in 2005 it was about 34 percent. The greatest percentage of drivers in alcohol-related fatal crashes are males, ages 21 to 34 (33 percent), followed by males age 35 to 44 (25 percent). If Americans would refuse to drink and drive, tens of thousands of them who might not otherwise make it to another day, would arrive home safely.

Variables

IIHS researchers separated vehicle effects from all other effects on motor vehicle death rates during 1985-2004 by estimating what the death rate trend would have been if vehicle designs hadn't been mandated to change over the years—that is, if people were still driving the types of less safe vehicles they drove in 1985, before government regulations required car manufacturers to satisfy harsher safety standards. The death rate trend, given this hypothetical vehicle fleet, started to go up in the 1990s, which is very different from the actual downward trend during the 10 years since.

"This suggests that an increasingly dangerous traffic environment has been offset since 1994 only because people are driving vehicles that are more protective," Lund points out. "Our concern is that the efforts we had been seeing in the 1980s to mandate belt use and toughen DWI laws diminished in the 1990s, at the same time that states were raising speed limits. This produced an increasingly dangerous traffic environment. It has become dangerous enough that, without the design improvements that have made vehicles more crashworthy, death rates would have increased. An estimated 5,200 additional lives would have been lost in 2004 without the vehicle design changes."

By only looking at the continuing decrease in auto fatalities, some advocates of higher speed limits, chaffing under the 55 mph national speed limit were able to lift that limit to 65 mph. In some states, like Texas, the speed limit was recently raised to 80 mph, and in other states to 75 mph on interstate highways.

"But our research shows that speed limits do matter," Lund says, "because, once we adjusted for vehicle age and design, what became clear are the escalating dangers of everyday traffic. We have serious problems out there with faster travel speeds, and we need to address these problems with effective policies. Of course, we also need to continue to improve vehicles, because right now this is the main protection in crashes associated with unchecked driving behavior like speeding." Of course, traffic conditions, road quality, and automotive performance capabilities all influence the effects of fast driving as well as the effects of speeding.

The research report, "Trends over time in the risk of driver death: what if vehicle designs had not improved?" by C.M. Farmer and A.K. Lund will be published in the journal, "Traffic Injury Prevention," later this year.