Lagging highway safety laws putting Americans at risk: Leaders call on states to end loopholes
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* Lindsey Wahowiak

As public health leaders gathered in January in Washington, D.C., to discuss how states are measuring up with regard to highway and traffic safety, two shared their very personal reasons for taking up the cause.

Both Colleen Sheehey-Church, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and Tom Didone, a captain with the Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Department, lost children to traffic crashes.

Sheehey-Church and Didone were part of a Jan. 22 panel releasing Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety’s report, “Lethal Loopholes: 2015 Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws.” The 12th edition of the annual report gives a rating of green, yellow or red to each of the 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, based on their progress toward adopting 15 recommended traffic safety laws.

The suggested laws include all-rider motorcycle helmet enforcement, booster seat guidelines, graduated driver licensing for teen drivers, ignition interlock devices for impaired driving offenders and all-driver text messaging restrictions. They also include primary enforcement of seat belt laws, through which law enforcement can stop drivers solely because occupants are not using seat belts.

While every state has some of the suggested laws in place, no state has implemented all 15, said Jacqueline Gillan, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and an APHA member. Only Washington, Oregon, California, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware and Washington, D.C., earned overall green scores in the 2015 report.

Didone holds mandatory seat belt laws particularly close to his heart: In 2008, his 15-year-old son, Ryan, was killed in a crash. Ryan was in the back seat of a car driven by a new teen driver. He was not wearing a seat belt. Wearing a bracelet with the words “Forever Fifteen” on it, Didone urged those in attendance at the Washington, D.C., news conference releasing the report to push for teen driver safety education and mandatory seat belt laws. No state can receive the advocates’ green rating without having primary enforcement seat belt laws for both the front and rear seats.

“Seat belt usage by teens is the lowest in society,” Didone said. “Rear passengers become ‘back seat bullets’ if they don’t buckle up.”

Didone noted that annually, 3,000 people who died in traffic crashes in the U.S. would have lived if they had just buckled up. The report estimates that half of all passengers killed in 2013 were not wearing a seat belt.

Only four states achieved a green rating on occupant protection issues — front seat, back seat and all-rider motorcycle helmet laws — Washington, Oregon, California and Louisiana.

On child passenger safety, only South Dakota and Ohio garnered a red rating, meaning the states did not have a child booster seat law, or that the law was subject to secondary enforcement: in which police can only cite drivers for the violation if they were stopped for another, primary infraction.

“Secondary enforcement will not stop someone from effectively breaking the law,” Gillan said during the news conference.

There were some causes for success in reviewing 2014 laws. Sheehey-Church called 2014 a “great year” for road safety. Improvements included:

*   New Hampshire adopted a cellphone restriction for teens;

*   Minnesota adopted a supervised driving requirement for teens;

*   Alabama, Delaware, Mississippi and New Hampshire adopted laws requiring ignition interlock devices for impaired driving offenders; and

*   New Mexico and South Carolina adopted all-driver text messaging restrictions.

Part of the success in implementing traffic safety laws comes from collaboration between public health advocates, government and the private sector, said Joan Claybrook, JD, president emeritus of Public Citizen and former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. She called insurance partners, in particular, who advocate for better traffic safety laws “invaluable allies.”

![Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/nathealth/45/2/1.4/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/45/2/1.4/F1)

APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin, left, speaks with Colleen Sheehey-Church, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, at a January event on highway safety. A new report finds loopholes in state highway safety laws.

Photo by Lindsey Wahowiak

One of those allies is Bill Vainisi, JD, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for Allstate Insurance Company and board member of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. He pointed out that traffic safety laws are something everyone can rally behind — making them even more important, and possibly easier, to pass. Particularly in a time when Congress could see stalemates in other aspects of public health, Vainisi said traffic safety could be a unifying topic.

“This is an exciting opportunity to put aside partisan differences and pass…lifesaving laws,” he said.

The impact the laws could have is dramatic, Vainisi noted: Each year, motor vehicle crashes kill more than 32,000 in the U.S. Another 2.3 million people are injured in crashes annually.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced in December that traffic fatalities declined slightly between 2012 and 2013, by 3.1 percent. It also reported a 25 percent decline in overall highway deaths since 2004. Still, in 2013, about 32,720 people died in traffic crashes. And preliminary reports indicate rates of injury and death might be going back up in 2014, according to safety advocates.

APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin, MD, noted that while efforts to improve traffic safety are working, “it is not enough and we must do more.

“Doctors do not give children partial vaccinations or treatment for childhood illnesses,” Benjamin said. “This is a preventable epidemic with effective, evidence-based cures. Enactment of strong and comprehensive traffic safety laws is essential to our efforts to stop needless deaths and injuries. Our challenge as public health professionals is to make sure that every person, no matter where he or she lives, has access to that safety cure. Unfortunately, that is not the case now in our country.”

The reach of traffic crashes goes beyond a human cost. There is an economic impact, as well. In more than 5.6 million police-reported crashes in 2013, societal costs were in excess of $870 billion, according to the report. Those costs include property and productivity losses, medical and emergency bills and other related costs.

“Dividing this cost among the total population amounts to a ‘crash tax’ of $4,897 for every person, every year,” according to the report.

Gillan summed up the importance of the laws.

“Strong and comprehensive traffic safety laws save lives and they save taxpayer money,” she said.

To read the full report, visit [www.saferoads.org](http://www.saferoads.org).

*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association