Highway safety: An Overview

The first thing anyone has to say about highway safety is it’s you, the driver, who has the ultimate responsibility. You have to make sure your vehicle is safe. You must drive it in a safe manner. (Yo, you, the dumb ass in the black Honda SUV on 20 West in Birmingham. Just so you know, next time you cut someone off that close they may not back down. If it weren’t for the woman passenger, I would have let you put yourself into a Franchitti flip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3NO_zYCvb4 ) And you must make sure you watch out for that dumb ass and other incompetent drivers.

The states have a responsibility; a lawyer might say a fiduciary responsibility to provide highway users with a safe travel environment. They own the roads. Some states go so far as to charge a specific use fee. All the continental states and Canada collect use fees under the guise of gas taxes and the International fuel tax agreement, IFTA.

There are four main areas of state responsibility:

Speed limits. Neither too high nor too low.

Safety enforcement. Everything from whacked drivers like dumb ass to unsafe vehicles.

Road conditions. Good surfaces, de-iced and well drained, with safe crash barriers and good emergency spaces.

Licensing. Let’s face it. American driver’s licensing requirements are a joke. A very bad, dangerous, joke.

I’ll discuss each of those areas in future entries.

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Future entries:

Speed Limits

Safety Enforcement