NTSB -- NTSB CHAIRMAN STRESSES EDUCATION, ENFORCEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY REDUCES HIGHWAY ACCIDENTS

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NTSB PRESS RELEASE

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National Transportation Safety Board

Washington, DC 20594

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 16, 2008

SB-08=29

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NTSB CHAIRMAN STRESSES EDUCATION, ENFORCEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY

REDUCES HIGHWAY ACCIDENTS

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Washington, DC - National Transportation Safety Board

Chairman Mark V. Rosenker today emphasized the three Es of

traffic safety: education, enforcement and engineering

solutions, and the need for advanced vehicle technology to

cut traffic deaths.

In the United States, we have seen a decrease in accidents.

"This reduction can be attributed to the use of seat belts

and child restraint systems; the development of airbags,

antilock brakes, crash-absorbing vehicle frames and

campaigns to reduce drunk driving," Rosenker said.

"However, in the last few years, this decrease has leveled."

During his speech before the Association for Safe

International Road Travel, Rosenker noted that since the

Safety Board's inception over 40 years ago, the agency has

issued more than 2,100 highway safety recommendations. More

than 1,800 of them have been acted upon - most of those led

to safety improvements, such as improved protection for gas

tanks on school buses, and the redesign of air bags.

To further reduce highway fatalities, the NTSB has

recommended that all 50 states and U.S. territories have

laws requiring booster seats for young children up to age 8,

enact primary seat belt laws, enact graduated driver

licensing legislation for teens which restrict the number of

teens traveling with young novice drivers and prohibit the

use of wireless communications devices by novice drivers,

among other provisions

The Board has also recommended a wide range of actions for

hard core drinking drivers. They include: frequent sobriety

checkpoints; stricter sanctions for those arrested for the

first time with a high blood alcohol concentration of 0.15

or higher; zero blood alcohol requirement for convicted

driving-while-intoxicated offenders when they get their

licenses back; and vehicle sanctions, such as ignition

interlocks for those drivers.

Chairman Rosenker turned to the Board's support for

intelligent highway design. "In 2001, the Safety Board

conducted a special investigation of technology to prevent

rear-end collisions and asked the government to complete

rulemaking on performance standards for adopted cruise

control and collision warning systems," he said.

Recently, the Board added enhanced vehicle safety technology

to its Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety

Improvements to increase awareness of safety steps that can

help prevent accidents and save lives.

"We must use the technology at our command to prevent even

more crashes from happening," Rosenker said. "We need to

encourage the continued development and implementation of

lane departure avoidance systems and curve-speed warning

systems to target the most fatal types of events - runoff

the road accidents."

The full text of Chairman Rosenker's speech is available at

http://www.ntsb.gov/speeches/rosenker/mvr080514.html

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Media Contact: Terry N. Williams

202-314-6100

williat@xxxxxxxx

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