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The
Automobile is Here to Slay[*]
Don’t drive drunk
in Norway.
Kjell Uleberg[†]
did on September 27, 2006. He had some red wine with his son, and he
left a little after midnight. Early the next morning, he left in his
car on the way to a meeting in another town.
He noticed another
car following him that appeared to be signaling him with blue lights
mounted on the grill. It was an old car that did not look like it
belonged to the police. Mr. Uleberg thought it was just some kids
playing a joke on him.
Only when he
noticed that a mat with spikes had been placed on the road in front of
him did he realize the car behind him must have been the police. He
stopped. He was asked to blow into a balloon. The breath test showed
Mr. Uleberg had a blood alcohol level of .07.
Mr. Uleberg would
not be in violation of any law in the United States, where blood alcohol
limits are .08 or 0.10. But Norway’s DUI law specifies .02. Mr.
Uleberg still had sufficient alcohol in his blood from the night before
to be arrested for drunk driving.
In Norway, that is
not a good thing.
Mr. Uleberg was
sent to jail for thirty days. He spent that time cutting wood in an
idyllic rural setting. In addition, he lost his driver’s license for
three years. And he was fined NOK 425,000 — $77,692 in American money.
Even though Mr.
Uleberg is well-to-do, the fine still hurt. It is supposed to hurt,
says Norwegian jurisprudence. Fines for drunk driving in Norway are
figured as a percentage of income. Since everybody’s income information
is available to everybody else in Norway via a public web site, it is no
secret to law enforcement.
Here are the
numbers of highway deaths per year per 100,000 population for 2006, for
a select group of countries:
|
Greece |
20 |
Germany |
9 |
|
Portugal |
17 |
Denmark |
9 |
|
United
States |
16 |
Finland |
8 |
|
Spain |
15 |
Sweden |
7 |
|
France |
13 |
Norway |
7 |
|
|
|
United
Kingdom |
6 |
If the U.S. had the
same highway fatality rate as Norway (7), the U.S. could save nine
people per 100,000 per year; that’s 27,180 lives each and every year.
U.S. highway deaths
totaled 42,536 in 2004. Forty per cent (17,014 deaths) of accidents
were alcohol and drug-related; 55 per cent were people who did not wear
seat belts — of these, it is estimated that about 11,697 could have been
saved if they had buckled up.
During the years
1979 to 1983, I had the honor of serving on two key committees in
Minnesota:
1.
The Minnesota Blue Ribbon Panel on State Health Priorities; and
2.
The Governor’s Council on Wellness and Health Promotion.
From the Blue
Ribbon Panel: The State Health Statistician at that time, Dr. Paul
Gunderson, told us that the three key root causes of death in Minnesota
were smoking, alcohol and drugs, and accidents — each factor
contributing about ten percent of all deaths. These were the
precursors of disease and death, and entirely preventable.
On the Governor’s
Council, initiated by Governor Albert H. Quie, we helped lobby through a
stricter DUI law, a seatbelt law, and a law specifying that all children
be placed in appropriate, safe seating when traveling in a private car.
The results were
stunning: Highway deaths plummeted from 834 in 1978 to 498 in 1983; Mr.
Quie’s single term as Governor oversaw a 40.3 percent decline in highway
fatalities. From 1983 to 2007, highway fatalities continued to decline,
but only by 0.8% ― from 498 to 494. In the endless fight against what
kills us, we must continually search for root causes, and address them.
Otherwise, we’ll stagnate or worsen. Governor Quie focused on root
causes when he entered office in 1979. There is no other way if we are
aiming to succeed. What would be the principal root causes of highway
deaths today?
Eighty percent of
people now wear seatbelts. Currently, twenty-eight percent of
fatalities are due to unsafe speed, and twenty-one percent are due to a
new phenomenon — inattentive drivers — mostly cell phone users and
people who multitask in their cars.
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If you
die in a highway accident, it will likely be in a rural area
(73%), or on a two-way county or state highway with only two
lanes (65%) — not on a freeway or turnpike.
You
will likely die in a collision with another motor vehicle, a
fixed object such as a train or a tree, a bicyclist or a
pedestrian, or you will roll over in a ditch.
It will
be between 5:30 and 8:00 P.M. on Friday, or between midnight
and 3:00 A.M. on a weekend. It is unlikely to be a Monday
or a Tuesday.
You
will likely be a student at the time of your accident (37%),
or a laborer (16%), or a homemaker (14%) or a farmer (12%).
Together, those four groups make up 79% of all highway
deaths.[‡]
Oh, and
overall, pedestrians are less safe than motorcyclists — even
though deaths of motorcyclists is the most rapidly rising
component of the highway fatality rate.
Highway
accidents are the principal cause of death for people from
four to thirty-three years of age. In fact, teens
constitute 14.3% of all fatalities (in Minnesota, 18.4%).
That is why forty-six states limit nighttime driving for
young and inexperienced drivers or restrict the number of
passengers a teen driver may carry. Those states have
reduced teen fatalities and injuries by 38-40%. Minnesota
is not among them. Ponder for a moment the fact that
two-thirds of those killed in car crashes with teen drivers
are not the drivers themselves, and then ask yourself why
four states still resist passing legislation that would
prevent these accidents.
Overall, Minnesota is a very safe state; only Vermont and
Indiana are safer. Montana is the least safe state for
drivers. Louisiana and South Carolina also rank high in
highway deaths.
It is important that we also
recognize and remember that the impact — economic and
otherwise — of the hundreds of people who are injured but
not killed, will stay with us for a long time. For each
fatality on the highway, there are sixty people who are
injured. That’s more that a quarter of a million people per
year, or about twelve times the number of Americans who have
been injured in Iraq since 2003. Over a lifetime, about
twenty-two million Americans will be killed or injured on
the nation’s highways — 7.4% of the population, or about 1
in 14.
In
principle, all accidents can be prevented.
We can
prevent every highway death by following a few simple rules:
1.
Slow down.
2.
Drive sober.
3.
Buckle up.
4.
Pay attention.
Then we
can focus on equipment and roads:
5.
Improve roads so that cars cannot cross the median or
roll over in ditches (guard rails).
6.
Install anti-collision systems in cars (as is already
done in airplanes).
7.
Remove the risks of unsafe pedestrian crossings (by
utilizing pedestrian bridges and tunnels).
That is
it. If all of this happened, we could prevent as many as
43,500 deaths per year in the U.S. Any drug that could
achieve that for any killer disease would be an instant
success.
Why
don’t we focus more resources on preventing deaths in this
country when we know how it can be done?
[*] Crossen, Cynthia. Unsafe At
Any Speed, With Any Driver, On Any Kind of Road.
The Wall Street Journal. March 3, 2008. B1.
[†] Dagbladet. January 15,
2008.
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