Traffic Supervision and Road Safety, Exams of Law

Download Traffic Supervision and Road Safety and more Exams Law in PDF only on Docsity! Traffic Supervision and Road Safety J. Stannard Baker Director, Research and Development Traffic Institute Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois Traffic supervision usually means the traffic work of police. Most people agree that traffic supervision is very important in preventing traffic accidents. Police activity, as it relates to highway safety, is a primary consideration in this paper. Perhaps traffic supervision may best be described as the elastic or flexible element in traffic safety programs— the work that fills in the gaps and plugs the holes left by the safety efforts of other agencies. Sometimes traffic supervision is what holds the traffic safety program together. Perhaps this idea can be expressed better in another way: if road builders provided the best possible streets and highways for safety, if car manufacturers and owners did the same for vehicles, and if driver educators and license authorities arranged to have all drivers fully qualified at all times, there would surely be little need for traffic supervision. Two contrasting examples in connection with roads and streets will illustrate how traffic supervision adjusts to needs. Forty years ago, recognizing the need for traffic control devices, Detroit police estab­ lished a traffic engineering department to install traffic signals and signs, mark parkings, establish speed limits, and indicate parking re­ strictions. Nobody else in the city was doing this. Today these func­ tions are performed by traffic engineers in Detroit and elsewhere. On the other hand, newly built limited-access roads have been so completely engineered that traffic supervision on them is largely assistance to motorists with relatively little need for police activity of essentially accident-prevention nature. Traffic supervision has three main functions: (1) traffic law enforce­ ment (2) traffic direction (3) traffic accident reporting and investiga­ tion. Each of these functions contributes to highway safety directly and also by enhancing the safety efforts of other agencies. In discussing such activities, it is not necessary to make a fine dis­ tinction between work which prevents accidents and that which keeps 21 22 traffic moving efficiently because it is generally conceded that smoothly moving traffic contributes importantly to highway safety. Traffic Law Enforcement The primary aim of enforcement is managing drivers. Most drivers at one time or another need reminding, such as enforcement can give, of how they should behave. But the main concern of traffic law en­ forcement agencies is the small percentage of drivers who repeatedly need to be deterred from proscribed behavior for thir own safety and that of other highway users. The reasons for not complying completely with traffic laws and regulations are by no means clearly known, but appear to fall into four general categories: (1) Ignorance—does not know what he is supposed to do. (2) W illfu l misconduct—violates knowingly. (3) Inadvertent misconduct. (4) Knowing misconduct in emergency. The second category, willful misconduct, may not have the greatest accident potential because of the alertness of the violator but it is peculiarly the responsibility of police and courts to make apprehension and penalization much more to be reckoned with by these violators than accidents that their misbehavior may contribute to. Police work is at best a clumsy and costly remedy for the first category, ignorance. The violator may be ignorant of general rules of driving such as legal speed limit or of requirements at a particular point such as zoned speed or prohibited turns. In the first case group and book instruction is more effective than individual lessons by officers on the street. In the second case, ignorance is usually the result of faulty communication with the driver by signs and so is primarily an engineering matter. Enforcement has a closer relationship to engineering than most engineers realize. The ultimate effectiveness of many traffic control measures, from one-way streets to parking restrictions, usually depends on the motivation to observe and conform produced by active traffic law enforcement. W e tend to forget this because the enforcement in­ ducements have been applied so long that we have come to think of them as “voluntary” but for the small unruly percentage of drivers, slackening of enforcement is permission to misbehave. Then, many others are persuaded by the example of the few that law violation is harmless. Traffic Direction Traffic direction is also an important, but usually unacknowledged, supplement to engineering. Many an inadequate signal installation 25 a particular accident are beyond the scientific and technical capabili­ ties of present accident investigation personnel. Do not construe this appraisal as an indictment of police traffic supervision. I t would be unfair to criticize police for shortcomings in accident investigation until full use is made of what information is now, or can be made, available with existing capabilities Other Functions of Traffic Supervision It is extremely difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of traffic super­ vision in preventing traffic accidents. There are numerous examples in which improved traffic supervision has clearly resulted in reduction of accidents. Reductions appear to be especially significant when the quality as well as the quantity of enforcement is increased. Quality is represented by such techniques as selectivity that concentrates effort at times and places where experience shows that accidents are most frequent. Traffic police can also report to other agencies conditions which require attention to prevent accidents. Traffic signal lamps which are out and signs which have been damaged are customarily reported this way. But police are likely to be familiar with what happens out on the road and often have practical and useful ideas about what can be done to improve conditions. Police generally feel that their suggestions are unwelcome. Some certainly involve unwarranted expense and some are quite impractical. But useful understandings can be worked out about what ideas are acceptable and how they may be most easily com­ municated. Where this has been done, hazardous road conditions can often be remedied before a long series of accidents and possibly law­ suits have forced the condition to the attention of those who can do something about it. Police reports to licensing authorities about drivers of questionable qualifications can serve the same purpose. Effects of Nonpolice Agencies The effect of enforcement on driver behavior and the resulting acci­ dents are modified immensely by activities of nonpolice agencies. Espe­ cially important is what courts do. There can be no question that severe and prompt penalties multiply the effectiveness of police patrol in controlling behavior and accidents. Driver improvement by licensing authorities also reinforces police activity. Driver education helps en­ forcement: if drivers have been well taught how to behave, police effort can be concentrated on dealing with those whose violations are willful rather than due to ignorance. 26 There is good reason to believe that driver behavior patterns in traffic change slowly and are influenced by many things. Once general patterns favorable to safety have been established, traffic law enforce­ ment can doubtless be lessened. But we are probably still far from optimum behavior and the ensuing happy day when law enforcement will be virtually unnecessary. For example, with autopsies showing that more than one-half the drivers killed in accidents had been drink­ ing, it will still be a long time before it becomes unthinkable to drive after drinking. Thus, for some time to come, traffic supervision will have to take up the slack and plug the holes in the total traffic safety program as best it can.