Deaths and injuries resulting from motor vehicles receive relatively little attention and few resources in the United States. For example, while the National Institutes of Health boasts institutes that focus on kidney diseases, hearing disorders, and dental research, no institute is dedicated to the leading cause of death for Americans aged 1 to 45: injuries. Motor vehicle crashes contribute the lion's share of these fatalities. In recent years, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety have all contributed to efforts aimed at raising the profile of traffic safety in the minds of policy makers and the lay public. Still it is relatively rare that public voices are raised out of concern for traffic safety, and when they are, they usually call for increased punishment of "guilty" drivers or for awareness campaigns that are not based upon any scientific foundation. What has led to this state of affairs? Some suggestions can be found in bodies of scientific literature that may be unfamiliar to the traffic safety community. This article will summarize some of these findings and propose how they might be applied to advancing traffic safety promotion.
Abstract