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Remarks Prepared for Secretary Slater, Congress of National Black Churches MOU Signing


Remarks Prepared for Secretary Slater, Congress of National Black Churches MOU Signing

Rodney E. Slater, United States Secretary of Transportation
December 12, 2000

REMARKS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY

U.S. SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION RODNEY E. SLATER

CONGRESS OF NATIONAL BLACK CHURCHES MOU SIGNING

DOT HEADQUARTERS

WASHINGTON, D.C.

DECEMBER 12, 2000

Thanks to the Congress of National Black Churches (CNBC) for taking a leadership role in educating African Americans about passenger safety as the United States Department of Transportation and the CNBC sign this Memorandum of Understanding. Before we continue, I'd also like to congratulate the CNBC for their extremely successful leadership conference in Kansas City a few days ago. Every year, every meeting, you continue to make progress in serving, supporting, sustaining and empowering the lives of African Americans across the country.

Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore's leadership, America's record in passenger safety has improved greatly. The use of seat belts and child safety seats is at an all-time high, highway fatality and injury rates are at an all time low, and railroad grade crossing deaths are steadily declining. Traffic accidents took the lives of 16 percent fewer children under age 5 in 1999 compared with three years earlier. While that's progress, we can and we must do more.

We must especially do more in the African American community, where traffic accidents remain a silent epidemic. African Americans are often unaware of the devastating impact of motor vehicle crashes, mistakenly believing that cancer, diabetes, HIV, heart disease and homicide cause more deaths. Yet motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for African Americans through age 14 and the second leading cause of death for young black males ages 15 - 24.

These deaths are all the more tragic because most are preventable. Only 66 percent of African Americans buckle up when riding in a motor vehicle. If all African Americans were to use their seat belts, we would save an estimated 1,200 lives and prevent 26,000 injuries every year.

In signing today's Memorandum of Understanding with the CNBC, the United States Department of Transportation will be able to reach even more African Americans about the importance of using seat belts and child safety seats. Our partnership will be part of CNBC's National Health Program (NHP), which already teaches people about the need for immunizations and disease prevention. And I can already predict this partnership will be another success as we work together to promote passenger safety and to increase seat belt use to 90 percent by the year 2005.

Today's Memorandum of Understanding is yet another collaboration that the United States Department of Transportation has undertaken as part of our "Buckle Up America" program. And it is our first-ever national partnership with a church organization to promote child passenger safety. Indeed, "Safety is a promise we must make and keep together," -- which is something we always say at the United States Department of Transportation. And today's Memorandum of Understanding with the CNBC builds on our record and on our many successful partnerships to educate even more Americans about passenger safety.

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Source:  U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)




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