Research on Fatal Intersection Crashes and Presidential Political Solutions
December, 2015
Roger Lanctot, a safety analyst, has written:“Automotive safety gadfly, Lou Lombardo, a former NHTSA analyst, notes that the total number of highway fatalities in the U.S. to date is 3,685,564 – three times the number of U.S. fatalities in all wars since 1776. As a result of these staggering figures, the historical and daily death toll, there is a cottage industry around mitigation strategies.” Seehttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fun-facts-fatalities-big-data-roger-c-lanctot
Having done some work in this area, I am making it available to our community for their potential additional contributions.
First, note Figure 11 in the attached Spatial Analysis paper in which we were surprised to find just 3 intersections in the U.S. that had at least one fatal crash in each of the four years 2001-2004. We were trying to define “dangerous intersections”. Defining the problem is important to developing solutions.
Second, deep data research is also important in defining the problems and developing solutions. In a NHTSA report, published in 2007, we examined intersection fatal crash data from FARS to better understand both problems and potential solutions for fatal intersection crashes. Seehttp://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810682.pdf
“Mr. Trump, are Americans safer with dictators running the world in the Middle East?
TRUMP: In my opinion, we’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly, if they were there and if we could’ve spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our airports and all of the other problems we’ve had, we would’ve been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now.
We have done a tremendous disservice, not only to Middle East, we’ve done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have wiped away, and for what? It’s not like we had victory.
It’s a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized. A total and complete mess. I wish we had the $4 trillion or $5 trillion. I wish it were spent right here in the United States, on our schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart.
(APPLAUSE)” See
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/us/politics/transcript-main-republican-presidential-debate.html
Lou