Remarks by Deputy Secretary Downey to the Lifesavers 16 National Conference on Highway Safety |
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Mortimer Downey, United States Deputy Secretary of Transportation
March 30, 1998
REMARKS
PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
DEPUTY SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION MORTIMER DOWNEY
LIFESAVERS 16 NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HIGHWAY SAFETY
CLEVELAND, OHIO
MARCH 30, 1998
Good morning. Let me start by bringing you greetings from Secretary Slater, who is in Botswana this morning accompanying the President on his trip to Africa. As the Secretary has so often said, safety is his, and the Department of Transportation’s, highest priority, the North Star which guides us.
The Secretary has shown that this commitment to safety is real by supporting new and expanded safety programs, but his deepest impact may come from a new perspective he’s bringing to all of our operations. As part of our landmark strategic plan, a plan which recognizes safety as the first of the Department’s five key goals, the Secretary has promoted the idea of ONE DOT.
America’s coins are stamped with the words E Pluribus Unum, "out of many, one," and that’s exactly what ONE DOT is all about. It’s not just better coordination or cooperation between DOT’s 10 modal administrations, but integrating their operations, their goals, and their philosophy to create a more unified and purposeful Department.
This is more important than ever in a world in which "intermodalism" isn’t just a buzzword but a day-to-day reality for our transportation customers. In such a world, DOT’s employees must work together as a team, and our need to achieve new safety goals is a perfect example of why we need to do this. Many safety issues, such as highway-rail grade crossings, cross the traditional modal barriers. We’ve got to work together if we’re going to solve these kinds of problems.
Our new DOT Safety Council is one of the steps we’ve taken to ensure the integration of ONE DOT. Chaired by Ohio’s Jolene Molitoris, our FRA Administrator, the Council brings together all of our DOT operating agencies to better connect their efforts. Currently, the Council is focusing on fatigue, how it affects travelers and workers in all of our modes, and how we can counter its effects. We’re looking forward to the Council’s bringing this integrated, cross-cutting approach to a wide range of issues.
Another way we’re trying to enhance our safety programs is expanded partnering all up and down the organizational chain: two weeks ago we brought in the directors of all of DOT’s field offices to work towards greater cooperation around the country. We’re going to continue to build this initiative, and I hope you’ll bring the same spirit to your own safety efforts. That’s because the principles which bring you together at the Lifesavers 16 conference are much like those which are making ONE DOT a reality.
Here at Lifesavers, diverse organizations with differing interests have been brought together by a shared goal: making our roads safer. I’m looking forward to your forming new partnerships during this conference, and to your taking an intermodal perspective which goes beyond safe roads to promote safe communities and safe families.
And as you become more intermodal, you will have support from an intermodal DOT. FRA might help by getting a major railroad to do a seat belt campaign, as they are doing, or NHTSA might help by assisting on outreach for a Coast Guard boating safety initiative, I should note that the Coast Guard’s District Commander, Admiral John McGowan, is with us today. The opportunities for cooperation between the different forms of transportation are boundless.
I’m confident you can make this intermodal approach to safety work because, over the years, you’ve been so effective in helping to make our roads safer.
If our highway fatality rate were the same as it was a generation ago, at the time DOT was founded, about 120,000 Americans would die on our roads every year, triple today’s number. So we’ve come a long way, but we still have far to go. Growing travel, fueled by a strong economy, has crowded our roads and caused improvements in safety to level off.
Drunk and drugged driving remain persistent problems. At least a third of all motorists still don’t use seat belts, and many don’t know how to properly use child safety seats. And aggressive driving is on the rise in our congested urban areas. These trends threaten an unacceptable increase in highway deaths, endangering the progress we’ve seen over the past generation and precluding future gains.
One of the steps we need to take to reverse these trends is to continue, and build upon, the programs which have helped us to make so much progress over the years.
The key is reauthorization of ISTEA, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, which covers highway, transit, and highway safety programs. More than a year ago, the Secretary and Vice President Gore joined President Clinton in proposing NEXTEA, our comprehensive ISTEA reauthorization plan.
And over the past few weeks Congress has been moving ahead with its versions of reauthorization. The Senate passed its reauthorization bill on March 12, the first anniversary of the President’s announcement, and the House Transportation Committee approved its version last week. The full House is scheduled to take it up this week.
Overall, we’re pleased with the substance of what Congress has done so far. Much of what’s in these bills reflects the fundamentals of the President’s NEXTEA proposal.
For instance, both bills include anti-drunk driving incentive grant programs which are virtually identical to those proposed in NEXTEA.
Both also promote seat belts, the single best way to protect a vehicle’s occupants. They provide funding to help us achieve the goals of the President’s National Seat Belt Plan, which, over the next two years, seeks to increase seat belt use to 85 percent and to decrease child motor vehicle deaths by 15 percent. These bills support the kinds of education and law enforcement efforts we’re promoting through our Buckle-Up America campaign.
The Senate bill, in fact, has two programs, one sponsored by Senator McCain and one sponsored by Senator Chafee. Senator Chafee’s includes an innovative provision which links seat belt use increases to their projected medical cost savings, and which rewards states which make progress.
So there’s much to applaud in these bills. However, we do have concerns.
First, the Senate’s funding levels for highway safety grants, one of our key programs, and one which supports state and local activities around the country, are much too low, 15 to 30 percent below our requests, depending on which fiscal year you look at. That’s true even with the bill’s overall spending higher than might be affordable.
The preliminary House numbers are much better, and we hope that the House-Senate conference will give this important program adequate funding as they deal with funding levels.
We’re concerned about the Senate bill’s restrictions on the Department of Transportation’s current ability to work with state legislatures when they deliberate on ways to promote effective safety strategies. This could harm our ability to get legislatures the information they need to make their decisions.
We’re disappointed that neither bill currently includes a program to support drugged driving countermeasures similar to that the President proposed in NEXTEA. We proposed to create a new incentive grant program to help states working to reduce drugged driving, and we hope that Congress reconsiders.
The Senate, following the leadership of Senator DeWine of Ohio and Senators Lautenberg and Dorgan, has included strong provisions to create a nationwide .08 blood alcohol content standard and to require open container laws nationally. The House bill as reported has neither provision, although I understand that Congresswoman Lowey and Congressmen Castle and Canady may introduce a .08 amendment on the House floor.
Let me say a little more about this, because the absence of these strong anti-drunk driving provisions in the House bill concerns us deeply.
You all know that two of every five fatal crashes are alcohol-related, a rate which is starting to edge back up after years of progress. We’ve got to take steps to reverse this trend, and .08 is a solid starting point. That’s why the President supported it earlier this month.
Now, virtually all drivers are substantially impaired at .08. Whether they’ve had one drink in the previous hour or five isn’t relevant: the level of impairment is, which is why a tough B-A-C standard makes sense. If .08 were adopted across the country, we could save 500 to 600 more lives every year. And yet only 15 states have this as their standard.
Elsewhere, .08 legislation has been fought, state by state by those who resist change. Without a federal .08 requirement, they may have the upper hand in blocking these laws. I hope that the House does the right thing, and joins the Senate to make .08 the law of the land.
I also hope that the House acts quickly, on this and on other reauthorization measures, and that the eventual House-Senate conference moves ahead promptly. Timely action is necessary. The original ISTEA legislation expired last October, but was resuscitated by Congressional extension. It’s now on life-support, and expires in a month. Its lapse would shut down safety programs all around the country.
So we’re hoping that the House will act quickly, and that Congress will send the President a bill which would keep these vital programs operating.
All of this, of course, is part of a great national debate over safety and how we work together to ensure it. I hope that, as this debate unfolds, you continue to make your voices heard.
I also hope that you’ll join us in meeting the challenges we’re going to face in the new century. A growing population in an increasingly auto-dependent society, a population which has both more very young and very old drivers, promises to generate more travel and, potentially, more crashes.
We have to continue doing what we’ve been doing, implement the kinds of proven programs we’re debating as part of ISTEA reauthorization, and look to the next generation of strategies. We have to focus on all three of the factors involved in safety: driver behavior, road design, and vehicle standards.
We have to identify new ways to address the role of human behavior in crashes, focusing on those carried out at the community level. This also means creative partnerships of the kind that I mentioned earlier, for instance, with medical and public health organizations. Lifesavers has been a model of this through your outreach to new players, and I hope you’ll continue these efforts.
We have to find ways to help travelers avoid collisions, and this means continuing to improve road design and to create new technologies, such as our Intelligent Vehicle Initiative, which can prevent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of crashes annually.
We have to better protect travelers when crashes do occur, and we have to help get them to medical attention more quickly. Improvements in vehicle design and materials can play a significant role, and new technologies, such as Mayday systems, can get help to crash scenes faster.
In order to do these things, we need the commitment and the support of people, people such as yourselves. So this morning I want to challenge you to join me in this effort to protect those we love the most.
We need your ideas and your energy as we seek to develop, and carry out, the strategies that will be most effective. And we need your voices to get the public support these new initiatives will need.
Let me close by saying that, with the help of the millions of Americans who are increasingly concerned about the safety of their families, friends, and neighbors, we’ll continue to save lives today, tomorrow, and every day, this year, and far into the new century.
Thank you for your attention, and for your hard work every day in the business of saving lives. Good luck in your work in this important conference.
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Source: U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)