The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ("IIHS") is an independent and nonprofit national organization that, in its own words, is "dedicated to reducing the losses -- deaths, injuries and property damage -- from crashes on the nation's highways."
With that self-imposed mandate come specific recommendations from the institute for increasing road safety, in Georgia and all other states throughout the country. The suggestions that the IIHS urges all states to uniformly adopt encompass strategies focused on all the contributing factors to motor vehicle accidents, including drunk driving, speeding and acts of reckless driving, teen drivers and other crash catalysts.
There is little that surprises in the proposed safety measures, and the states have acted on most of them by either adopting them outright, partially enacting them or refusing to implement them at all after due consideration.
For example, the stress on primary seat belt laws has been well considered in every state. Georgia joins 31 other states in making a safety belt violation a primary traffic offense.
Readers will note Georgia's stance on sobriety checkpoints (DUI roadblocks), since we just touched on that in a recent blog post. Candidly, state law enforcement agencies conduct roadblocks with a vengeance compared to most other states. The IIHS adamantly approves of the practice, but that view is far from universal; 12 states do not conduct checkpoints, and five flatly bar them under state law.
The IIHS also urges maximum adoption of red-light cameras to catch speeders and drunk drivers, a strategy that is also somewhat controversial and far from universally adopted among the states. Georgia has not enacted a camera law or official program, but the cameras are in use in locations across the state.
Related Resource: Wall Street Journal, "Safety Group: Seven Ways to Make Driving Less Deadly" Aug. 18, 2011
