Driven to Distraction

This is old news now, but very noteworthy. A July 21, 2009 article in the New York Times revealed that the U.S. government withheld important data on risks of distracted driving, stating:

"In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel. They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways.

But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress."

The article includes statements by the likes of the former head of the highway safety agency who is quoted in the article as saying he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states.

Fortunately the research data has since been released and in case you weren't convinced of the danger, the article notes also that "The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002."

This article, and in fact there is now a whole series on the topic on the NYT website, to me really shows the importance of public opinion in shaping public policy. Congress can be bought out, and at times that can be extremely detrimental to the nation, but it can only go so far if the public opinion turns against them.

I sometimes wonder if the US would not be a very different place if there were all of a sudden no automobile advertising, which incidentally stood at something like US$10 billion or more in 2008. Good use of public bailout money that is... car companies start to fail because we realize we just don't really want life with cars so much any more, then govt steps in and bails them out so they can keep pitching cars that we don't want to us.