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Roads and cars are safer, now let's focus on drivers
By RICHARD RUSSELL
Thursday, December 2, 2004
Transport Canada data indicates that although more of us are driving, fewer are being killed while doing so. Collisions and deaths were down 5 per cent in 2003 from the year before and injuries declined 3 per cent, the data says. Road traffic deaths have dropped almost 50 per cent since 1980.
For statistics junkies, there are 21.7 million licensed drivers in this country (or more accurately there were at the end of 2003, when the data was collected) and more than 18.8 million passenger vehicles. There were 2,496 fatal collisions in 2003 resulting in 2,778 deaths. That's the good news. The bad news is that the quality of driving has steadily decreased. These significant reductions in death have come about almost totally through improved roads and vehicles -- through passive safety.
We more often drive on divided highways with opposing traffic less a concern. The vehicles we drive are filled with thousands of dollars worth of devices -- incredibly efficient impact-absorbing structures and up to eight airbags in many cases.
Vehicle manufacturers and regulators around the world have taken this significant, and obviously successful, step in reducing traffic deaths.
What has not been done, with very few exceptions, is to tackle the calibre of driving and driver training. Politicians are quick to take credit for safer roads and vehicles. But it is a rare elected official who is willing to tackle the thorny issue of driver training, retraining and retesting.
As the Canadian population ages and record numbers of us stay on the roads, the effects of poor initial training and long periods without mandatory retraining or refresher courses will start to show.
The proliferation of drivers willing to run red lights and ignore stop signs and other regulations will soon result in a reversal of the trend of reduced carnage on the road.
It might be politically difficult to mandate stiffer training regulations for new drivers and mandatory retesting at certain intervals, but in many parts of Europe such steps have been taken.
Perhaps the incentive and lead role could come from the insurance industry. Surely reduced likelihood of expensive claims could be rewarded with lower rates. It's a game of numbers and if sufficient numbers of new drivers received better training and enough licensed drivers were regularly retrained and tested, the crash rates for these individuals could result in lower insurance rates.
What about a system whereby every new driver, and every driver found guilty of breaking a traffic law, is hit with very high insurance rates amounting to thousands of dollars. Those rates would continue for, say, three to five years. But every six months or so of incident-free driving would result in a significant cash rebate.
The high rates would cover the industry's costs for these higher-risk individuals and be the incentive for them to stay incident free. The cash rebate would be a regular reminder of the importance of doing so.
The same theory could be used for mature drivers -- expensive until and unless they participate in a program involving retesting and retraining.
Let's not lose track of the increase in unsafe driving practices in the heady news of fewer deaths. That temporary bandage will only work for the short term.
Halifax-based Richard Russell runs a driving school.
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