Federal Roads Bill Upgrades States’ Driver Safety

Kevin Jordan is a retired State Highway Patrol trooper who believes that learning how to drive means learning what to do when the brakes lock up.

“Many kids don’t get anything more than the basic stuff, and the way our traffic congestion is right now, they need to know how to respond to many other situations,” said Jordan, who runs Learn Right Driving School in Powell, a Columbus, Ohio suburb.
National experts agree, saying there is a hodgepodge of driving courses, taught in schools or by private companies. Curriculum and teaching requirements vary by state and even by county.

“We need to be focused on vehicle handling, crash avoidance, driver behavior and risk interaction,” said Mantill Williams, a spokesman for the American Automobile Association.

The federal highway funding bill pending in the House would create an office within the Transportation Department to help states update driver education programs by providing guidelines, education and $5 million in annual grants.

The bill also would require automakers to post the results of government crash tests on new vehicles, mandate that the government use child-size dummies in standard crash tests and ban the sale of electronic devices that allow drivers to change traffic lights from red to green with a button.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee spokesman Steve Hansen says the safety measures have a good chance of passage. “Safety programs in general tend to receive support on bills like this,” he said.

Teens make up 6.6 percent of all drivers but are involved in 14 percent of all fatal accidents and 16 percent of all crashes, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

Jordan and traffic safety experts say national driver education standards should be adopted so teenagers everywhere receive uniform training. “They need to know what to do in emergency situations,” Jordan said. When brakes fail, for instance, a driver should maneuver toward the shoulder, using directional signals and slow the car by gradually letting up on the gas and switching into a lower gear.

While the bill wouldn’t mandate national standards, it would help states narrow the gap in training differences.

In the past five years, more states have adopted graduated driver’s licensing, which restrict driving until teenagers get more experience behind the wheel. Advocates say such programs help ease teens into driving.

Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, said most states agree national guidelines are needed. “We don’t want to penalize states but we need to provide resources to states that are crying out for help on this issue,” he said.

The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators has not endorsed the idea but isn’t opposed to it, spokesman Jason King said.

The requirement to post crash test results would increase consumer access to the scores for frontal, side and rollover impacts, which are reported as zero to five stars. The information now is available on the Internet.

“When you go to the showroom, you actually get to see what the crash test worthiness is of a car,” said Sally Greenberg, senior product safety counsel for the Consumers Union. “You see, for example, that this truck got three stars and this other truck got five stars. So you think, ‘Maybe I want that truck.'”

Automakers support the concept but say they are afraid making all the information available for all seven kinds of tests could lead to information overload.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration now uses child-size dummies to test safety seats and air bags, but neither test involves crashing a car. The bill would require child dummies also to be used in standard crash test where vehicles are driven into a wall.

Lawmakers in several states, including Florida, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, have introduced legislation banning unauthorized use of the traffic light changers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The devices, called MIRTS, have been used for years by police officers, firefighters and paramedics and have become available to the public recently through Internet sites. The highway bill proposes fining users or sellers $10,000 and sending them to jail.

“We don’t need people fiddling with the lights for their own purposes,” said Steve Austin, manager of the Emergency Responder Safety Institute. “If someone is changing the light on a lark just because they want to drive down the highway, then that has a potential for an accident.”

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