Aug. 5, 2005

July 12, 2005

Following a press release from a major sports car maker, here in America, DSA has posted an op-ed titled: Racing Drivers are NOT Road Safety Experts

July 3, 2005

Following an article in the Sacramento Bee, DSA has posted an op-ed titled: 

'Driving Instructor Standards in the USA'

May 23, 2005

In Western New York, Teenagers Don't Get the Brakes

     A pilot survey in a Western New York high school reveals some dangerous beliefs about driver safety but also shows that on some aspects the students do surprisingly well.

April 20, 2005

A Vacuous and Dangerous Argument About Speed and Safety, from 'Safe Speed'

     Just as a few organisations in the USA argue that the now uniform 0.08% blood-alcohol limit is too low, despite only two countries in the world still having a higher limit, so Safe Speed in the UK argues that drivers should effectively be allowed to make up their own minds about what speed is safe at any given moment. Yet examination of both of these standpoints reveals deadly flaws that their authors either fail or refuse to accept.

March 24, 2005

Journalist Makes an Age-Old, Facile Point

     Drive and Stay Alive issued a response to New Zealand media regarding an editorial in Hawkes Bay Today, and that response was published by Scoop (see the above hyperlink).

March 14, 2005

Fallacy Often Prevails in the World of Crash Reporting

     Two completely separate media reports within the past 24 hours, from the USA and Australia respectively, highlight the fact that speculation and inaccurate comments play an excessively large part in undermining road safety standards.

     First, from America, came a story about a man who died when his car ran off the road on a curve and overturned and police officers at the scene said the man had probably fallen asleep at the wheel....

     The second story, from Australia, concerned the case of a well liked and respected lady who was killed when "her car failed to negotiate a curve and veered off the road and into [a] river."

     In both of these cases, one must ask:  Oh, really?...

Feb. 02, 2005

Defense Attorney Defies New York State Cell Phone Law and Decries Global Research

A niece of the Buffalo Police Chief is claiming that she is a responsible driver despite using a cell phone while driving. And although blatantly contravening New York state law, her defense attorney claims that global research is "nonsense" and boasts that he still uses his own phone while driving.

Oct. 26, 2004

Irresponsible Auto Journalism. When auto journalists whose columns are usually sensible resort to attacking "safety Nazis" it is time to despair.

Aug. 2004

At the NTSB "Standards in Driver Education" Forum, in October 2003, an invited speaker -- a professor of road safety -- made the utterly baseless claim that America leads the world in road safety and still this myth refuses to die!  

On August 12, 2004, a press release from a government road safety body was issued in which it was stated: "America's leadership in highway safety is not yet established but we're going in the right direction."

Oh, really?

Why is it, then, that in the latest, fully available figures [2003] the USA has slipped back two places to be in 28^th position out of the 30 OECD member-countries for the per capita death rate (and also in 40^th position out of 50 known countries overall)?

Feb. 2004

A study of International Road Crash Fatality Rates, for the ten-year period 1992-2001, shows that the USA has had a very poor per-capita death rate throughout and made the least improvement of any of the 24 countries listed.

Jan. 29, 2004

Do You Believe There is Reasonable Safety on Roads in the USA? – Think Again!

Americans are over 2000 times more likely to die in a road accident than win the lottery!

We also have a table which shows the death rate for each individual U.S. state by comparison with other countries around the world. Click here.

Dec. 1, 2003

Officials Mislead America About Highway Safety 

Setting the Wing Mirrors -- A Reflection on Fashion  (Relevant article)

There is currently a buzz going around regarding the settings for wing mirrors. The method that some people recommend is potentially risky and frankly has no benefits...