National Group Works for Safer Roads

By NICHOLAS COATES
Union Leader Correspondent
Friday, May. 12, 2006

NASHUA – In the last three years, American military casualties have totaled more than 2,400 men and women. By comparison, more than 125,000 Americans of all ages have been killed on the country's roads during that time, according to the head of a national road safety organization.

And, according to Fraydun Manocherian, president of the National Road Safety Foundation, hundreds of thousands more are injured in crashes at a total annual cost of more than $250 billion.

Manocherian, who founded the organization in 1962 after losing two friends to drunk drivers when he was teenager, has dedicated his life to reducing deaths and injuries on America's roads and highways, he said.

"Automobile crashes continue to be the number one cause of death for Americans up to the age of 33," said Manocherian. "And an overwhelming majority of those crashes are preventable."

In April, Manocherian unveiled a comprehensive nationwide program that would educate and retrain drivers. The program, which would be paid for by a half-cent per gallon of gasoline tax, would bring uniform driver education programs back into high schools, and would fund programs and incentives to encourage retraining of experienced drivers, he said.

A uniform driver education curriculum would bring better drivers to the roads and reduce fatalities in the highest-risk group, teens and young adults, he said.

The NRSF's Adele Kristiansson spoke at City Hall Wednesday night to discuss drowsy driving, a greatly under-reported factor in many driving accidents among all age groups, she said.

Drowsy driving occurs when drivers are tired from physical fatigue, experience sleeplessness because of a chronic condition or from medication, she added.

"Drowsy driving is a seriously under-reported casual factor in many crashes and is as preventable as DWI," said Kristiansson, director of marketing and legislative affairs for the NRSF. "Crashes that occur as a result of drowsy driving are 100 percent preventable."

Drowsy driving is under-reported because there is no test for it like there is for intoxication, so there's no clear way to identify it, Kristiansson said. Many states don't even have a code for it on their vehicle accident reporting forms, she added.

Kristiansson identified four high-risk groups Wednesday: teens and young adults (ages 16 to 24), shift workers (police, EMTs, doctors, etc.), commercial drivers, and people with sleep disorders. In the case of shift workers, many are people who work different hours than what the human body is used to. Kristiansson added that commercial drivers account for about 15 percent of the crashes involving drowsy drivers.

The NRSF created a program to address the issues surrounding drowsy driving and donated it to the New Hampshire Department of Education. The program, which includes discussion topics and teaching materials, was given out for use in high schools, to police officers and to driver's ed teachers.

The program identifies the high-risk groups and shows the common characteristics of drowsy drivers, Kristiansson said. The program also makes recommendations for in-car and lifestyle interventions to combat drowsy driving.

Many of the accidents involving drowsy drivers occur only a few miles from home because the drivers believe they can get home before falling asleep, Kristiansson said. And that happens because the sense of judgment is the first to go when driving drowsy, she added.

"It's not discussed, really, but if you missed a day of sleep, it's equivalent of being a drunk driver," said Kristiansson. "Judgment goes and it's like your body feels the effects of having a blood alcohol content of .10.

Kristiansson said the best measure to combat drowsy driving is to have an alert passenger in the car to help keep the driver awake or to switch off driving when the driver gets tired.

If a driver is alone, she said, a good short-term solution is to pull over at the first sign of feeling tired ("head snaps" when the driver's drifts forward and then snaps back when the drive wakes up), get a caffeinated beverage and take a 20-minute nap. Doing that would help the driver continue driving for another 45 minutes.

For more information, log onto www.nationalroadsafety.org or call toll-free 1-866-SAFEPATH.

Contact: David Reich
(212) 573-6000
david@reichcommunications.com

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