Reduce Road Fatalities

Last week Tennessee Department of Transportation Commissioner Gerald Nicely joined representatives from the Governor’s Highway Safety Office, Department of Safety, Department of Health, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, AARP, AAA Auto Club South, and a number of other highway safety partners to sign a new Strategic Highway Safety Plan for Tennessee on Wednesday, September 30. The goal of the new plan is to reduce the number of fatalities in Tennessee by 10% by 2012.

Citing the success of the 2006- 2008 Strategic Highway  Safety Plan, Kendell Poole, Director of the Governor’s Highway Safety Office said, “The good news is the number of deadly crashes in Tennessee dropped nearly 14% between 2007 and 2008. The bad news is there were still more than 1,000 people who died in crashes in our state last year. We want to see that number decline even more and are pledging today to reduce fatal crashes by another 10% by 2012.”

The new Strategic Highway Safety Plan again focuses on the four “E’s”: Education, Enforcement, Engineering, and Emergency Response, with a goal of having fewer than 900 fatalities on Tennessee highways by 2012. The new plan also includes a new program designed to educate senior drivers. When crash and fatality rates are calculated, older drivers, much like teen drivers, are over-represented.

“All drivers, whether it’s teens just learning to drive or seniors who’ve been driving for decades, need to be consistently reminded about safe driving practices and updated on new traffic laws,” said Department of Safety Deputy Commissioner Greta Dajani.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration fact sheet on older drivers focuses on the older population in the United States which includes all people age 65 and older. In 2007, 13 percent of the total U.S. resident population (38 million) were people age 65 and older. There were 30 million older licensed drivers in 2006 – an 18-percent increase from 1996. In contrast, the total number of licensed drivers increased by only 13 percent from 1996 to 2006. Older drivers made up 15 percent of all licensed drivers in 2006, compared with 14 percent in 1996.

In 2007, 196,000 older individuals were injured in traffic crashes, accounting for 8 percent of all the people injured in traffic crashes during the year. These older individuals made up 14 percent of all traffic fatalities, 14 percent of all vehicle occupant fatalities, and 19 percent of all pedestrian fatalities. Most traffic fatalities involving older drivers in 2007 occurred during the daytime (79%), occurred on weekdays (72%), and involved other vehicles 71%.

The new Senior Driver Safety Education Program aims to give seniors the information they need to stay up to date on new traffic laws and other safety measures they can take to improve their driving skills. You and I, as individuals, can help make this happen if you commit to reviewing the Tennessee Rules of the Road and make a good faith effort to follow the law and become safer drivers.

If you or a loved one is injured in a Nashville car accident involving a teen or an older driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.

https://news.tennesseeanytime.org/node/2623