Expect Education And Enforcement

Drivers in Washington, D.C., can be forgiven if they feel their morning commute on the Beltway is more like a lap around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. A just-released report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirms that aggressive driving is now our No. 1 concern, with one woman referring to driving as a competitive sport.

This dangerous phenomenon has become a nationwide hazard, as the Washington Post and other papers have reported. A survey by the American Automobile Association reveals that 48 percent of drivers feel threatened by aggressive driving - nearly double the number who said the same about drunk driving.

When it comes to safeguarding the public against aggressive driving, one way we can all take responsibility is to resist the temptation to run red lights. Running red lights may save 30 seconds, but it could cost you your life.

President Clinton has made safety the No. 1 transportation priority of his administration. To further that goal, my department and private industry, specifically, the American Trauma Society and Chrysler Corp., have joined forces on an initiative aimed at curbing aggressive driving called Red Light Running.

Running red lights is a major cause of urban automobile accidents, costing not only lives but also $7 billion a year in property damage, medical bills and time lost from work. Researchers have discovered that running traffic controls (red lights, stop and yield signs) accounts for 22 percent of urban crashes, and among those crashes, 24 percent directly resulted from running a red light. Injuries occurred in 45 percent of red-light-running wrecks, as compared to 30 percent for other types of crashes.

These figures will surprise no one, including Washington-area residents, who approach intersections with a mixture of dread and hope.

We are right to be wary. A group of researchers studied a busy intersection in Arlington County over a period of several months and found that a motorist ran a red light every 12 minutes, with that rate increasing during peak periods - rush hour! - to once every five minutes between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m.

So what is to be done? Societies can change bad behavior by insisting on adherence to basic rules of civility, one of which is that we should not endanger one another by running red lights. We simply must end the beat-the-light mentality that running lights is just another acceptable aspect of a fast-paced society - “I had to run six lights to get here on time, but I made it!”

Instead, we must see red-light running for what it is: the moral and social equivalent of driving drunk.

We forget that drunken driving was once an ignored problem, and among many younger drivers something of a rite of passage. While we once turned a blind eye, public appeals and societal pressures changed our attitudes toward drunk driving and we are the better for it.

So, too, must we change our attitude about running red lights. In fact, a program similar to our Red Light Running campaign, conducted in Dallas, found a 17 percent decrease in injuries during the program’s two-week enforcement program. We’re shooting for a 20 percent reduction during our initial campaign, with reductions increasing as red-light running becomes seen as the act of a social pariah.

In addition to this public education effort, our enforcement actions continue in communities nationwide. These two tools - education and enforcement - can bring about the changes necessary in driver attitudes.

That will take time, to be sure.

As sociologists tell us, when a broken window is left unrepaired, it is soon joined by many other broken windows. A similar phenomenon has happened with red-light running. We have come to accept it as being not very different from throwing a rock through an already cracked window pane. It has become second nature to many drivers.

Yet we all know that when every broken window is immediately tended to, a sense of order is restored and the other windows are left intact. That is why a major part of the Red Light Running campaign will involve ticketing offenders.

Honor Thy Stoplight is a sound philosophy. It is about to become a strongly enforced philosophy as well.