2024-10-02 16:25:03
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Keynote speaker and investigative journalist Jessie Singer, author of “There Are No Accidents,” spoke about the deadly rise of traffic fatalities and how society’s focus on personal errors rather than underlying road conditions is an impediment to safety. “I want to debunk the idea that traffic crashes are the result of human error.” Rather, the cause of crashes is poor road design that rewards speeding. The automobile industry has escaped culpability and benefited from our tendency to blame victims rather than the poorly designed roadways, unsafe streets, and monstrous passenger vehicles that are the true cause, said Singer. We must accept that mistakes will happen on our streets, she says, and design them to minimize the harm caused when drivers inevitably err.
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“If you make this world safe for drunks, you make it safe for everybody,” she said, quoting Dr. Susan Baker.
Singer says the auto industry invented the terms “jaywalker” and “the nut behind the wheel” to blame pedestrians and drivers for deaths, rather than poor automobile design and bad streets. She received applause when mentioning that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently announced that it will, for the first time, look at regulating vehicles for their danger to pedestrians.
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