As the chairman of the Senate's Surface Transportation Subcommittee, I've been proud to fundamentally change the way Congress approaches highway safety. As a result, Mississippi is receiving $9 million to fix a few of our most dangerous roads and intersections.
When my subcommittee wrote last year's highway bill, we set aside almost $500 million for a performance grant incentive program, an award pool for states that improve seat belt usage.
During this year's session, Mississippi's state lawmakers passed a primary seat belt law, making Mississippi eligible to receive a portion of this federal award, $8.7 million to be exact. Our state can use this money to further improve highway safety, including restructuring dangerous intersections, enhancing highway signs or even redesigning dangerous sections of road.
By passing a primary seat belt law, Mississippi has joined more than half the nation's states in implementing tougher seat belt requirements, and I'm confident a majority of states soon will have tougher seat belt laws and more seat belt usage. Instead of penalizing states with low seat belt usage, the federal government is finding success with a more positive approach. When federal grants are offered to states taking proactive measures to strengthen seat belt laws, states have more incentive to act. When states act, lives are saved.
In fact, my subcommittee's Occupant Protection Incentive Grants are expected to save 1,200 lives on our roadways annually. As more states take advantage of the program and enact more stringent seat belt enforcement, that number is bound to rise.
In Washington, state traffic fatalities declined nine percent within a year of passing a primary seat belt law. Among all jurisdictions with primary seat belt laws, the average seat belt use rate is 11 percent higher than in states without primary seat belt laws. Every percentage point represents many lives saved. Nationally, it's 250 lives saved for each point.
While it's sometimes a discomfort to wear a seat belt, every time we get in a car and buckle up, our chances of death are reduced by almost half. For folks driving pickup trucks and SUVs – which includes me and a lot of our fellow Mississippians – our chances of dying in an accident drop by an incredible 60 percent.
In 2003, 17,000 people who died in vehicle crashes were not buckled up, and sadly 500 of them were children. Most of those deaths could have been prevented with the simple click of a seat belt buckle. As most traffic safety experts will tell you, putting on a seat belt is the most effective way of reducing traffic fatalities.
Highway safety has always been a personal issue for me. My father will killed in a car accident while traveling along a dangerous stretch of Highway 15, just south of Laurel. That was back in the 1960s when folks just didn't wear seat belts. And some cars back then came from the factory without them. Safety belts weren't even an option in most trucks then.
We've come a long way in automotive technology and safety since the 1950s and 1960s. Cars are made to absorb an impact now, better protecting the occupants. Brakes are better. Handling is better. We have padded dashes and airbags – all standard on most cars. Yet those innovations mean little without seat belts. This simple restraint is still the foundation of all automotive safety systems. Leave it off, and we're taking unnecessary risks. By wearing a seat belt, we save lives, and we might just find more money to fix that dangerous curve down the road, too. Mississippians have every reason to click it. (5/26/06)
Senator Lott welcomes any questions or comments about this column. Write to: U.S. Senator Trent Lott, 487 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510 (Attn: Press Office)
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