Is LaHood a Safety Czar, or our new Godfather?
By Chad
Dornsife, Executive Director
Best Highway Safety Practices Institute
August 18, 2009
The United States Department of Transportation has become a classic
example of government gone wrong. Its charter is to assure a healthy and robust
transportation infrastructure that is operating safely for the common good. What
it has turned into is a crime syndicate operated by, and for, special interest
that depend on the USDOTÕs malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance and disregard
for our Constitution and the rule of law. Which begs the question is the head
of the USDOT a Safety Czar or a Godfather?
Early after the USDOTÕs creation in 1966, its
mission became duplicitous in that Congress also charged National Highway
Traffic Safety Agency (NHTSA) to market the merits and success of its National
Maximum Speed Limit (NMSL) after Congress had vested heavily in creating an
army, with support staff to enforce it, when the data was showing nothing could
have been further from the truth. Thus, NHTSA, the USDOT agency charged with
these responsibilities began manipulating the data to show success, when that
wasnÕt sufficient, they started manufacturing the data and supporting studies.
Over time, NHTSAÕs with its ends justifies the
means ethos, manufactured data, false cause and affect safety myths, and the
aid of billions of dollars and ubiquitous unchallenged PSA's created to mislead
our engineering and public safety institutions, the judiciary, academia and We
the People, and with its coconspirators, it ultimately misled Congress. NHTSA
and its beneficiary special interest have parleyed this costly Public Safety
Face into a controlling interest in the USDOTÕs conduct, to the clear detriment
of safety and due process.
One real casualty of this institutionalization of deceit
running public policy and every act being predicated on pretext or an invented
value, enforcement threshold or condition. In the last 30 years, we have also lost
those that knew why we do engineering studies, and what they represent, what
due process means and how it is it applies to law enforcement, and courts that
care about either.
Our lost ethos, this 1972 IACP/NHTSA describes
abhorrent practices that today are lauded by the IACP and the USDOT; cities
have either automated them, or agencies deploy special enforcement teams to
write citations en masse, month after month and year after year, at the same
locations.
SELECTIVE TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT MANUAL
International Association of Chiefs of Police, Inc.
Highway Safety Division
January 1972
Re: FHWA Library #: TEA1400.F72
U.S. Department of Transportation
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Washington, D.C. 20590
DOT HS-800 701
"The most visible result of quantitative,
revenue-oriented, nonselective traffic law enforcement policies is the persistent
use of "sitting-in" enforcement techniques. Sitting-in usually occurs
at locations which, in police jargon, are referred to as "duck ponds"
or "cherry patches". The sitting-in practices are particularly objectionable
when two or more enforcement units group together to work an intersection which
generates frequent driver violations. Usually, where this situation occurs, the
officers are doing nothing more than reaping the harvest of inadequate or poor traffic
engineering. These locations frequently encourage noncompliance by the motorist
to traffic signals or turning regulations. Very often, however, the real culprit
is faulty traffic engineering rather than the driver. Poor positioning of signals
and channelization deficiencies are characteristically present at the "duck
ponds".
Make no mistake about it, Òcherry patchesÓ and
Òduck pondsÓ based on poor practices and under posted limits have now became a way
of life for our enforcement agencies, not safety. NHTSA in the 90Õs went so far
as to change the way it reports FARS data to exclude poor engineering practices,
roadside hazards or design deficiencies; all causation is now driver ÒrelatedÓ.
Study: Bad roadways
big factor in traffic deaths
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/23/dangerous.roads/index.html
From Kathleen Koch
CNN
Monday, June 23, 2003 Posted: 5:07 AM
EDT (0907 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new study finds
roadways -- not driver error or faulty vehicles – to be a significant factor
in crashes that claimed more than 24,000 lives between 1998 and 2001.
Some believe the ReaderÕs Digest Magazine and AAAÕs
numbers here cannot be supported because of the small sample size. What are not
disputable are the accident reductions that were obtained, and when this
program was later expanded to other locations, the results were the same.
More importantly, what the AAA of Michigan failed to
realize they were observing was an omnipresent legacy of unsafe practices, no standards
oversight, or mandated roadway safety audits being done. Nor did their estimates
include whole categories of unsafe practices that have become institutionalized.
We believe these numbers are more than double the AAA estimates.
This last month we have been busy attempting to respond to an incredible
onslaught of purported safety measures where the USDOT is moving forward to expand
it police powers over We the Sheeple. Speed limits and distracted driving alone
took eleven pages to generalize the why not.
USDOT Distracted and Operating Under the Influence
(extracts)
LaHood announces Trojan Horse Safety Summit being delivered in September!
The universal solution is always new laws and ever growing justifications for traffic
stops, improvements in writing citations en masse and curtailing due process. One
thing that would shock most Americans is the fact that writing traffic citations,
as practiced on our highways, has been documented to have a virtual zero effect
on accident rates. Well over 90 percent of the more than 50 million citations written
each year are issued to those according to the FHWA; et al are otherwise driving
safely.
This is where the National Highway Safety Administration, NHTSA, AKA the
Federal Agency of Urban Myth shines. With billions of public treasure and billions
more from insurance companies over the decades they have created a public cause
and effect perception that is patently untrue. The special interests have taken
over our public safety policies to a point that true safety programs go unfunded
and neglected. This is where it gets scary, because what is killing us is not attributed.
Who will we find manning this Trojan Horse Summit? The guest list is a whoÕs
who of regulators that benefit from regulating, special interest, empire and political
favor seekers and those that profit from them and their minions; none represent
the ÔCommon GoodÕ, ÔWe the PeopleÕ or the ÔRule of LawÕ or empirical scientific
findings or our safety. NONE!
This USDOT Safety Summit is like a national meeting of McDonaldÕs franchisees
being organized to represent the rights of cattle.
The National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) chart here clearly shows
that there is NO CORRELATION between their myriad of crisis claims, safety programs
and the actual accident data. Cell phone use increased exponentially and in the
month of December 2008 10 billion texts were sent, with zero effect on the rates,
not even a bump, likewise, for the other issues in the headlines recently. The greatest
correlation to the number of fatalities and fatality rates is the economy and levels
of discretionary driving, roadway and vehicle design, not the number on a sign or
the regulation of a reasonable person acting responsibly.
Early in 2008, in a press release, we made two based-in-fact forecasts;
1. That 2008 would have both the lowest number of those killed and fatality
rates of all time; and
2. That every public agency that could issue a press release, would
claim credit for their program du jureÕs reductions in fatalities which they
had nothing whatsoever to do with.
Both were right on point and came true!
Which prognosticator has the greatest direct correlation to fatality rates?
ItÕs the health of the economy, unemployment rates, the cost and availability of
fuel and how these affect travel patterns, vehicle choice, occupancy and miles driven.
ItÕs not traffic enforcement, the number posted on a sign, zero tolerance,
roadblock, check your papers or pretext stops, devices or method of
communication, double fines or the age of the driver.
During periods of a system shock, the highest risk discretionary driving
all but ceases. Therefore the drop in fatalities will always be greater than the
reduction in miles driven. During these shock periods vehicles and roadways improve
and by the time the economy recovers, the rates appear to plateau for a few years,
as they gradual return of the highest risk activities are mitigated for by the
improvements. Thus, when charted over time, the overall rates continue their historical
decline virtually unabated.
The Best Highway Safety Practices Institute came into existence because
of a common thread that has remained constant no matter what the issue was. If
you want safe roads or to eliminate enforcement abuses and assure fair laws and
courts the solution is fact based best practices applied uniformly with
deference to our Constitution, and its protections for the rights of an
individual.
Simply, if
those that we have entrusted our lives and well being followed our laws we
wouldnÕt have enforcement traps, kangaroo courts and thousands dying and being
injured each year unnecessarily. We need your help and knowledge is our best
weapon against tyranny, but others prefer tea bags, either way silence is not a
solution. Get involved!