NHTSA seeks to improve highway safety, reduce traffic fatalities
"Significant and Seamless" initiative will accelerate new technologies to reduce key safety risks
Today, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced that, while highway deaths over the past five years continue to remain at historic lows, the number of deaths on U.S. roads increased to 33,561 in 2012, up 3.3 percent from 2011.
To a Department where safety is always our number one priority, any increase in the number of traffic fatalities is cause for concern.
That’s why NHTSA today announced a new effort that involves the agency and the automotive industry working together to aggressively accelerate technologies that would improve safety by targeting some of the most persistent causes of traffic fatalities.
Called "Significant and Seamless," this initiative focuses on real solutions already in development that can address critical safety threats that have plagued our roads for decades--including failure to use seat belts, drunk driving, and driver error:
- Seatbelt Interlocks would prevent a vehicle from being operated if the driver and passengers are not properly buckled, saving thousands of lives a year by boosting the current national level of seatbelt use from 86 percent to near 100 percent.
- Driver Alcohol Detection Systems for Safety (DADSS) can prevent a vehicle from being started when a driver's blood alcohol content is detected by the system to be above the legal limit.
- Forward Collision Avoidance and Mitigation (FCAM) technology would use sensors to detect an impending forward crash before it occurs, alerting the driver to take corrective action or automatically applying the vehicle's brakes.
Each year, highway deaths claim more than 30,000 lives. And while we’ve made substantial progress over the past 50 years, it’s clear that we have much more work to do.
It's also clear that these three factors--not applying seat belts, drunk driving, and driver error--are areas where we can work with automakers to make a big difference relatively quickly.
In the meantime, DOT will continue to work closely with our federal, state, and local partners educating drivers about unsafe practices and protecting the motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians who use our nation's roads.
Caitlin Harvey works in the DOT Office of Public Affairs.