Transportation

Safe-driving campaigns don’t work nearly as much as we need them to. It’s time to spend the money better.

Safe-driving campaigns don’t work nearly as much as we need them to. It’s time to spend the money better.

It’s hard to dispute the urgency of protecting American road users; traffic deaths are rising at the fastest rate on record, particularly in urban areas. On a per capita basis, walking, biking, or driving is significantly more dangerous in the United States than in other developed countries. But how helpful are the many, many education campaigns found across the United States? How many lives are they saving?

Thoughtfully designed and implemented, education programs can and do induce safer travel behaviors, especially if they target a specific audience with new and actionable information. But all too often, education campaigns reiterate messages people already know, like the dangers of speeding or texting while driving, or emphasize humor or fear, which generally fails to shift behavior. Worse, they put the ultimate onus for safety on the individual, sapping resources that could go toward more systemic solutions.

Tires Pollute More than Tailpipes, Report Claims

Tires Pollute More than Tailpipes, Report Claims

Believe it or not, rubber particulates from tires may pollute more than gasses emitted from vehicle tailpipes. Varying by compound, the emissions created by tires come in the form of expelled rubber particles which eventually reach waterways or soak into nearby soil. According to Emissions Analytics, a UK-based vehicle data specialist, tire-wear particles account for emissions at a rate 16 times greater than the maximum tailpipe emissions allowed for modern cars in the UK.

Over a tire's lifespan, it will emit an average of 1850 times more particles than the actual tailpipe emissions of a modern gas car. How did they come up with this whopping statistic? Data was collected using proprietary particulate sampling equipment over the course of 1000 real world miles in combination with precision scale weight figures on all four tires. Hundreds of brand-new and used tires in addition to various driving styles created additional variables in particulate mass emissions measurements.

Emissions Analytics cautions that such figures need careful scrutiny. "The fundamental trends that drive this ratio are: Tailpipe particulate emissions are much lower on new cars, and tire-wear emissions increase with vehicle mass and aggressiveness of driving style," the company report reads. "Tailpipe emissions are falling over time while tire wear emissions are rising as vehicles become heavier and added power and torque is placed at the driver’s disposal.

Automakers Promised Technology Would Make Roads Safer. It Hasn’t.

Automakers Promised Technology Would Make Roads Safer. It Hasn’t.

Earlier this week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released the latest road fatality statistics. It is “grim reading,” the latter being a phrase that regularly appears in news articles about American road death statistics for the past half-century. 42,915 people died while trying to get where they needed to go on U.S. roads last year. That’s 117 people on average each day, or about the number of people you can stuff into a large regional jet. One plane going down every day for an entire year