(HealthDay is the new name for HealthScoutNews.)
THURSDAY, June 26, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Better enforcement of traffic laws would prevent many of the 3,000 daily deaths from motor vehicle crashes worldwide, a new study says.
The researchers' conclusion was based on a look at more than 10 million people over 11 years. The study found that each traffic conviction led to a 35 percent decrease in the relative risk of death in the following month for that driver and other road users. The research appears in the June 28 issue of The Lancet.
"Traffic enforcement is effective for saving lives and decreasing demands for medical care and saving money for society. That is in deep contrast to prior research that has looked at compliance with the law, and implies that enforcement does not have to generate perfect obedience to still generate enormous benefits to society," says study lead author Dr. Donald Redelmeier, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and a staff physician in the trauma center at Sunnybrook and Women's Hospital, also in Toronto.
However, motorists' rights groups don't quite agree with that formulation.
"They're making some stretches here," says Eric Skrum, a spokesman for the National Motorists Association in Waunakee, Wisc. "They don't go into the types of citations, what's causing the accidents, and the correlation between the two. They're trying to come up with a cause and effect without defining what is the cause and what is the effect. There's no explanation as to why a citation is going to affect anyone's driving behavior."
According to the study authors, 1 million people die in road-traffic collisions across the globe every year. Another 25 million people are permanently disabled.
"More than 1 million fatalities worldwide this year from motor vehicle crashes is exceeding worldwide deaths from malaria for the first time in the history of mankind -- which is all the more impressive for a cause of death that was unheard of a century ago," Redelmeier says. "On an average day, more than 100 Americans step into their vehicles and do not emerge alive."
Redelmeier led a team that looked at traffic statistics between 1988 and 1999 in the province of Ontario, an area with about 6.8 million drivers. During the study period, 8,975 licensed drivers had fatal crashes, and 21,501 driving convictions were recorded. An additional 4,861 drivers with suspended licenses were involved in fatal crashes.
Drivers who were involved in fatal crashes were cross-referenced with conviction records. As it turned out, the risk of having a fatal crash in the month following a conviction was about 35 percent lower than when no conviction was issued. The benefit had dissipated by three to four months after the conviction, and in general did not seem to be influenced by what the conviction was for. Penalty points, however -- notably those for speeding tickets -- reduced the risk of fatal crashes more than convictions without penalty points.
"We observed enforcement rates at about one conviction every five years. Increasing enforcement to one conviction every three years may be feasible, and this would yield about 3,000 fewer deaths each year globally," Redelmeier says.
This translates into one death being prevented for every 80,000 convictions and one emergency room visit prevented for every 1,300 convictions and $1,000, the authors state.
Redelmeier believes that it is possible to tighten up enforcement. "What makes this so timely is the emergence of new technologies, such as photo radars and red-light cameras and laser imaging, which are astonishingly reliable and affordable and risk-free for the police officer," he says.
It really all boils down to changing people's behavior. "Ideally, people will see a societal responsibility to yield to pedestrians, but if people aren't going to operate at this higher sense of place, the fear of getting a ticket can make a difference," says Justin McNaull, a spokesman for the American Automobile Association in Washington, D.C. "If fear of a ticket is what causes people to drive safely, there's a value to it."
McNaull knows about tickets: As a police officer in Arlington County, Virginia, for six years, he doled out hundreds if not thousands of them.
Still, drivers are going to have to be sold on the idea, which won't be easy.
"One of the major drawbacks is that police enforcement is not a public relations winner," Redelmeier admits. "Advocates have to carefully explain that the lives saved are often passengers and pedestrians or others. In North America, for every 10 drivers killed, there are also five passengers killed and two pedestrians.
He add, "Even a short trip provides potential opportunities to make contact with more than 1,000 other vehicles, and all it takes is just one other driver to do something wrong to completely throw off your journey."
And while Redelmeier is only too ready to talk gloomy statistics, his own "conviction" comes from his work in Canada's largest trauma center.
"What strikes me every day is that just one or two small errors while driving can change your life forever," he says. "Most crashes come as a great big surprise to the drivers. Most crashes leave no opportunities for corrective maneuvers, and most crashes result in all sorts of injuries that we often don't do that much for. We do something for them, but we rarely return a person to as good as they were before the event."
More information
For more on road safety, visit the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
