Cars and Carnage:
A "Woolley" analysis of highway transportation risk
27 Dec 2006 in Regulatory Science, Regulatory Economics, Regulatory Policy
Today's Washington Post has an op-ed by Peter Woolley, a pollster and professor of political science at New Jersey's Fairleigh Dickinson University, Woolley says the number of people who die in motor vehicle crashes is "staggering" but this risk issue is "absent from the agenda of most public officials and largely ignored by the public."
The op-ed includes relatively specific policy recommendations:
Roads need to be made safer, for example, by extending guardrails and medians to every mile of busy highways. Speeding and aggressive driving need to be much more rigorously controlled. Trucks need to be separated from automobiles wherever possible. And cars need to be built slower and stronger.
Woolley implicitly assumes that the benefits of these regulatory actions would exceed their costs -- or alternatively, that it doesn't matter what they cost, or even if they would work. He also recognizes that the public is largely unified in opposition to his proposals. He proposes to solve that problem by "bludgeon[ing] people -- as they need to be -- with statistics," believing that this will persuade them to agree.
Woolley says "significantly reducing deaths on the roads requires radical solutions in the form of regulation, investment and enforcement." Specifically:
Roads need to be made safer, for example, by extending guardrails and medians to every mile of busy highways. Speeding and aggressive driving need to be much more rigorously controlled. Trucks need to be separated from automobiles wherever possible. And cars need to be built slower and stronger.
These "radical" solutions are actually quite timid. Few are opposed in principle to safer roads, guardrails and medians, and both automobile and truck drivers generally appreciate having lane separation. Each involves mundane technologies whose more expansive adoption is only constrained by cost. But it's also not clear that the value of their lifesaving benefits would exceed their costs. Woolley implicitly assumes this, or alternatively, that it doesn't matter how much they cost. 
But this is empirically false. Highway users might be willing to pay for engineering improvements, but they won't agree to 100% traffic enforcement or Draconian penalties for violations. Vehicles can be made slow just by installing underpowered engines, but consumer demand for such vehicles is very limited. The federal government would have to require that all motor vehicles run slowly -- perhaps like the infamous Tomorrowland PeopleMover. Yet even that was not risk-free. It has been reported that there were two deaths over its 28 year run. "The guests were at fault for jumping out of their cars, and were crushed by oncoming trains." In other words, the PeopleMover was so slow it was dangerous.
If the cost of making the world a safer place is ignored, you'd think there's no limit to how safe you can make it. But in fact there is a limit, because highway users don't want zero risk. Enforcement against speeding and aggressive driving is popular as long as it is limited to drivers who drive faster and more aggressively. Time is valuable, and people are willing to bear highway risks to save time.
More radical solutions have been proposed than those listed by Woolley. For example, highway fatalities could be reduced to approximately zero by installing 12" spikes in the middle of the steering column. Apart from estranged lovers, however, it's not clear who would buy them.
Woolley gives a very conventional "political science" explanation for all this. Lack of public interest is due, he says, to the opposition of special interests:
[E]very solution is readily opposed by someone: manufacturers, industrial unions, truckers, consumers, taxpayers -- though all are potential victims themselves. The public is not to blame. It is hemmed in on every side by mind-numbing advertising and shouted stories of the moment.
Among political scientists, Woolley seems unique insofar as he has identified such a broad array of opponents that it's not clear who's left to support his proposed remedies. One thing he believes in is the effectiveness of risk communication tools that routinely fail:
Apparently no medium is willing to bludgeon people -- as they need to be -- with statistics and trends on the dangers facing them every time they set out in their automobiles.
Woolley has volunteered to wield that bludgeon:
Only if there is a public outcry will this situation get the attention due it. Only when people fully realize the absurd and avoidable costs of the dangers that stalk them on the road -- and then demand governmental action in the form of forceful intervention and strict regulation -- will this become the story of the year, as it should be.
Woolley is executive director of PublicMind, Fairleigh Dickinson's polling and survey research center. PublicMind appears to focus on New Jersey politics and has not performed any research on risk or about public attitudes about highway safety. His bio lists publications in comparative politics (notably Japan), but nothing in risk analysis.
In their nontechnical 2002 book entitled Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around You, risk analysts David Ropeik and George Gray agree that "nearly all crashes can be avoided" and thus highway deaths are "one of America's biggest preventable killers" (p. 125). Indeed, they suggest that one of the problems associated with highway risk is that crashes are usually called "accidents," implying randomness or the absence of a responsible party. But they stop short of recommending the kinds of regulatory actions favored by Woolley. Instead, they focus on cost-effective actions drivers can take to reduce risk.
As simple as it may seem, this represents a fundamental difference in world view. Whereas Woolley appears to believe that highway risk happens to people and thus should be reduced by stringent (and stringently enforced) government regulation, Ropeik and Gray view risk as part of a complex trade-off of costs and benefits the balancing of which is primarily an individual responsibility.
