Why Not Hold Traffic Safety to the Same Standards as Transit?

Noting the stringent safety standards that transit agencies like the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) must meet to continue operations, Caitlin Rogger, writing in Greater Greater Washington, poses a question: “Why do authorities treat traffic safety as though it’s less important than transit safety?” After all, “traffic violence causes many more deaths and injuries than public transit: one in a hundred of us will die from it in our lifetimes.”

After a derailment in October 2021, WMATA was directed to pull half of its trains out of service while the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission (WMSC) investigated issues at the agency. Injury-causing incidents on transportation modes like trains or airplanes trigger immediate regulatory responses to investigate what went wrong and ensure future safety. “Reactive measures usually include some combination of grounding or pulling the mode of transportation out of service, plus a full-fledged investigation into how the system failed to avoid a casualty or near-casualty event, such as the 7000-series derailment in October.”

“But many, many more people die and are hurt every year by personal vehicles than they are by transit or airplanes,” Rogger points out, yet “our legal system and the media both apply a much lower standard of safety when it comes to vehicular violence.” Rogger continues, “Transportation departments don’t routinely shut down the site of a car crash until we fix a design issue that led to it, even when it happens more than once,” and “Authorities don’t often recall all the cars fitting a make or model when it’s involved in repeated crashes (it does happen sometimes if there’s a demonstrable flaw–but what if the issue is not a bug but a feature?).”

Rogger outlines her hypotheses for why traffic safety is often perceived as an individual responsibility rather than a systemic problem, as well as signs of a healthier approach: locally, cities can improve safety by lowering speed limits, pedestrianizing streets, and prioritizing infrastructure for walking, biking, and public transit; meanwhile, the federal government could impose higher taxes on the most dangerous vehicles, create clearer federal safety standards, and encourage safe systems approaches to road design.