If the “Homeland” is Safe, Is America Safe?

Posted on | February 13, 2015 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

“Too often, road safety is treated as a transportation issue, not a public health issue, and road-traffic injuries are called accidents, though most could be prevented. As a result, many countries put far less effort into understanding and preventing road-traffic injuries than they do into understanding and preventing diseases that do less harm.”(1)

That’s what Dr. LEE Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organization,said in 2004. At the time it was estimated that 140,000 injuries occur on roads worldwide each day. Fifteen thousand people were disabled as a result, and 3,000 die.(1) In the year 2000, 1.26 million people were killed in roadway accidents, accounting for 25 percent of all deaths from injury that year.(2,3)

In 1990, roadway injuries were the ninth-leading cause of death and disability worldwide. But by 2020, that ranking is projected to shoot to number three, just behind ischemic heart disease and unipolar depression. The change in rank is based on a projection that roadway injuries will increase by 60 percent in 30 years if current trends continue.(4)

The burden of unsafe roads falls most heavily on the most vulnerable. But as we dramatically witnessed on February 4, 2015, in Valhalla, NY, the US is far from immune to this kind of preventable human carnage. In that accident, Metro North train # 659 crashed into a sports utility vehicle driven onto the rails by a 49 year old mother of three. The car was carried a thousand feet down the rails, and she died along with five passengers caught up in a fiery blaze in the lead train car.

An unfortunate “once in a million” transportation event in the most highly developed nation in the world? Apparently not, according to an investigative report in the New York Times last week. Their reporters took a road trip around the Metropolitan area to visit “the 10 crossings that the railroad administration’s accident-prediction algorithm deems the most likely sites for crashes in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.”

Here’s the list including the number of railroad accidents at each site since 1975:

Elmwood Park,NJ – Midland Ave. (29 accidents)
Brentwood, LI – Washington Ave. Ave. (8 accidents)
Brentwood, LI – Fifth Ave. (8 accidents)
Central Islip, LI – Carlton Ave. (10 accidents)
Ramsey, NJ – Main Street (6 accidents)
Oceanside, LI – Atlantic Avenue (10 accidents)
Wyandanch, LI – 18th Street (6 accidents)
Bethpage, LI – Stewart Ave. (9 accidents)
Hackensack, NJ – Main Street (7 accidents)
Hackensack, NJ – Anderson Street (6 accidents)

Are these the exception rather than the rule across America. Yes and no. The worst location in the US is in Ashdown, Arkansas. They’ve had 19 accidents since 1975. But according to last week’s report, only 112 other sites have risk paradigm scores as high or higher than those listed above, but that’s out of 130,000 nationwide that were studied. Risk rises with the number and type of trains and autos, speed of crossing trains (some commuter trains cross at up to 80 mph), the presence of partially obstructed and “on-grade” track crossings, the absence of automated safety rails, and a history of faulty equipment.

Of course, all of these issues are correctable, and occasionally, after a tragedy, that is exactly what happens. Back in 1982, 9 teenagers riding in a minivan died in a fiery blaze in a train crash in Mineola, Long Island. In the aftermath and public outcry, citizens demanded a corrective response to the unsafe crossing. To their credit, the state did respond, but the creation of the new overpass took them an unbelievable 16 years and $85 million. Balance that against a Federal Highway Administration’s Section 130 program (for crossing improvements) annual allocation of $220 million for our entire nation.

As our Congress considers vast increases in Military and Homeland Security budgets in the name of “securing our homeland” (which are already, by all accounts, excessive), few appear to appreciate the irony. The reality is that “the homeland”, formerly known simply as America, each and every day, for each and every citizen who crosses rail, rides rail, uses roads and bridges, or rides and walks on spaces not safe or adequate for pedestrians, is not safe. And the reason has nothing to do with terrorists. It is a function of a Congress and a range of State Houses which neither lead nor represent this nation very well.

For Health Commentary, I’m Mike Magee.

References:

World Health Organization. “Road Safety is No Accident: A Brochure for World Health Day 7 April 2004.” Geneva, Switzerland; 2004.

2.United Nations moves towards action on Road Traffic Safety following Bone and Joint Decade proposal. [press release]. Bone and Joint Decade. September 16, 2003.

3.Ahead of General Assembly, Annan urges commitment to Road Safety. [press release]. Bone and Joint Decade. September 9, 2003.

4. Murray CJL, Lopez AD, eds. The global burden of disease: a comprehensive assessment of mortality and disability from diseases, injuries, and risk factors in 1990 and projected to 2020. Boston, Harvard University Press, 1996.