Health Journalism 2011: The intersection of highway safety and health

Ryan Sabalow
Redding (Calif.) Searchlight Record

If a disease killed nearly 33,000 Americans each year and was the No. 1 killer of Americans younger than 35, it would surely be a topic covered by most health reporters.

Substitute "fatal traffic wrecks" for the word "disease" and reporters have "all the elements of a great public health story" that's not being reported as much as it needs to be, said Jacob Nelson, director of traffic safety policy and research for the American Automobile Association.

Nelson and his fellow panelists, journalists Robin Schwartz and Andy Miller, urged journalists who attended the "The intersection of highway safety and health" panel at Health Journalism 2011 to examine whether public health leaders, traffic safety officials and lawmakers were doing enough combat traffic deaths.

Nelson said that, while traffic accidents are 100 percent preventable, many Americans have become complacent about them even though the United States is well behind much of the developed world in the rates in which people die on the roads.

The panelists said crash rates go down when states implement stiff drunken driving penalties, bans on texting and talking on cell phones, booster seats for young children, reduced speed limits, motorcycle helmet laws, seatbelt requirements and "graduated teen licensing" programs that restrict times in which young drivers are on the roads and whether they can carry peers in their cars.

Yet in many states, traffic safety agencies and elected leaders are hesitant to advocate for or implement some of the laws, even though they're being pushed by safety groups and agencies such as the National Transportation Safety Board, the panelists said.

Schwartz, a masters student at the University of Austin Texas who received a fellowship from the Carnegie and Knight foundations to report on highway safety, said lawmakers from several states told her they were hesitant to implement some of the laws because of cost concerns and because they would be perceived as unpopular.

For instance, in North Dakota, where the legal age limit to drive is 14, legislators told her that constituents in farming communities disliked the idea of having to ferry their teens around.

Similarly, Texas legislators told her they were worried parents would struggle to pay the costs of booster seats, she said.

Miller, the editor of Georgia Health News, said the proliferation of cell phones is a particularly rich topic, with estimates that 11 percent of the nation's drivers are talking on the phone at any given time.

"This is an emerging story in every state," he said.

As for laws that restrict cell phones in cars but allow drivers to use so-called "hands-free devices," Nelson said there's no evidence they make driving and talking safer. Even with both hands on the wheel, a driver's brain is focused on the conversation and not the road, he said.

Jennifer Smith, the president of FocusDriven, whose mother was killed in a wreck in 2008 by a driver talking on a cell phone, was unable to attend the panel as planned. But Miller said her group, which lobbies against distracted driving, would be an excellent resource for reporters looking to tackle the topic.