A Special Report on the Symposium for Traffic Safety Research
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sewAvvroache 13 ^3 A SPECIAL REPORT ON THE SYMPOSIUM FOR TRAFFIC SAFETY RESEARCH Alan S. Boyd, Secretary of Transportation SPRING, 1968 JUDSON B. BRANCH Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Allstate Insurance Companies at the Auto Insurance Industry Second Annua] Traffic Safety Research Symposium Allstate Plaza, Northhrook, 111. March 19 through 21, 1968 On behalf of the 1,400 Allstaters in our Home Office, may I welcome you to your Automobile Insurance Safety Research Symposium here at Allstate Plaza. I trust each of you will feel for the next three days and thereafter that our home is yours. Our greetings also go to our co-host, the Travelers Insurance Com• panies; to our Symposium sponsor, the Insurance Institute for High• way Safety; and to the University of Michigan Highway Safety Re• search Institute, which produced the basic body of research. We hope you are inspired by the Symposium Symbol and its mes• sage of Research, Reaction, and Results. Of course, the first letter of each of these words is "R" and so it follows the symbol of the Sym• posium deals with the three R's. Our three R's are more sophisticated, however, than those that have come to be associated with the little one-room schoolhouse. Today we are confronted with problems and challenges of a complexity undreamed of even a few years ago. One of these problems stems from the fact that it is popular in some quarters today to talk of the automobile insurance crisis. It seems to me that this view suffers from a lack of analysis. It confuses one of the identifiable symptoms with an underlying cause. It is true we are confronted with a crisis. It is, however, as much or more a crisis of transportation as it is of insurance—really a crisis concerning the role of the automobile in America. A crisis in the re- 1 engineering of our roads and our cars and drivers. Secretary of Transportation Alan Boyd will address you on the role of the automobile in the future national transportation system. I will not trespass on his area other than to suggest that as we re-engineer our roads and as we re-engineer our cars, we must also undertake to re-engineer those who operate them. This can only be done through a breakthrough in our knowledge of driver behavior. We believe that the catalytic effect of associating for three days in a highly or• ganized atmosphere of accomplishment will bring out of each of you major contri• butions in the field of driver behavior. These contributions, when organized and TRAFFIC presented can, in turn, offer us a blueprint for our future actions. Research must be our foundation. We must know more about driver behavior and we intend at this meeting to find out. All of our research must be dedicated vigor• SAFETY'S ously to support of the Highway Safety Act. This new era in traffic management for the nation must be our end objective—research is a vital means toward that end. The enormity of the traffic catastrophe demands swift and efficient installation of the THREE R'S highway safety standards in every state and community. But research is not enough. Reaction must occur if research is to be meaningful. The dedication of people to RESEARCH accomplishing goals upon which they have agreed is the reaction we seek. REACTION Results are what we all seek. Results are demanded of us because the real crisis we are facing is the 10,000-plus injuries every day. To the extent that a dollar sign AND can replace human misery, all of this adds to an unbelievable 900 million dollars a RESULTS month in economic loss, and each year it increases. To reverse this tide would in• deed be an accomplishment. I am confident that driver behavior research can help us to do this. And in turn as we begin to solve the problem of putting only qualified people on the highways —and allowing only qualified drivers to remain on the roads—then we begin to attack the root causes of these soaring increases in the number of accidents, the toll of lives, and the cost of insurance. Where does this lead us? The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is taking the leadership in identifying, outlining, encouraging and supporting meaningful driver behavior research that must implement the Highway Safety Act. In addition to evaluating what has gone before, our seven research reports will break new ground in their assigned fields. In addition, they will disclose vast gaps in our present knowledge, and this will be helpful for future guidance. Our challenge, then, as this Auto Insurance Industry Second Annual Research Symposium opens, lies in two fields—competent research and vigorous action, together and immediately. NEW APPROACHES ANALOGY TO LEARNING JAMES D/DAY, M.S., has an extensive background in automobile safety re• search. He is Research WHY DRIVERS Engineer of the Highway 11 Safety Research Institute BEHAVE AS THEY DO of the University of Michigan. DONALD C. PELZ, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and Project Director of WHO ARE THE the Survey Research Cen• 13 ter, Institute for Social DANGEROUS DRIVERS? Research, University of Michigan. GEORGE E.BRIGGS, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and director of the Hu• man Performance Center at Ohio State University, THE DRIVER IN DANGER 16 specializing in experi• mental and engineering psychology. SELDEND.BACON,Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Alcohol Studies at Rut• gers University and has served on numerous na• THE DRINKING DRIVER 18 tional committees study• ing the effects of alcohol and drugs. WARD EDWARDS, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and head of the Industrial Psychology Laboratory, WE DRIVE AS WE LIVE 20 Institute of Science and ANALOGY Technology, University SPRING, 1968 of Michigan. Analogy is published by the Allstate Insur• ROGER C.CRAMTON.J.D., is a ance Company, Allstate Plaza, Northbrook, professor of law at the Illinois 60062, on behalf of the company's University of Michigan Law School especially in• LEGAL CURBS Driver Education Section, Ralph J. Jackson, terested in effectiveness 23 Manager. Analogy is printed in the United of legal sanctions in ON DRIVERS States and entered as third class matter at controlling highway the Chicago, Illinois, post office. It is mail• accidents. ed free to a selected list of educators and others working actively in the field of traffic RONALDG.HAVELOCK, Ph.D., safety and driver education. Apply to editors is Project Director of the for permission to reprint text or photo• Center for Research on THE METAMORPHOSIS: graphs. Copyright 1968 m&M\ the Utilization of Scienti• TURNING FACTS 26 by the Allstate Insurance (yJ^^jS) fic Knowledge, Institute INTO FACTORS for Social Research, Uni• Company. versity of Michigan. STAFF: David U Watt Editor SECOND SYMPOSIUM ON A SUPERPROBLEM 4 Walter Oleksy Associate Editor Robert McCuUough Graphics Editor BRIEFL Y ST A TED 8 Sona Gordon Designer SUMMING UP THE SYMPOSIUM 30 Roger Burgis Production SECOND SYMPOSIUM ON A SUPERPROBLEM More than 300 sociologists, educators, engineers, insurance executives, and others gather for a three-day look at driver behavior in an effort to make driving safer By Sheldon Mix They came. They heard. They pondered. unappreciated rate of a year ago: deaths that research was needed, and this was And they contributed their knowledge of over 1,000 a week, and total casualties accomplished,'* said Don Costa, director and experience to the Auto Insurance running at over 10,000 injured each day.** of safely of the Allstate Insurance Com• Industry Second Annual Traffic Safety The symposium's attendees totaled 325. panies. "The second one put people on Research Symposium in its pursuit of a They traveled to Allstate's year-old Home the podium who could tell us how little mysterious theme: Driver Behavior— Office from as far away as California and we know about this driver who has grown Cause and Effect Massachusetts, and offered experience up among us. They also told us a lot Hie effort to understand why drivers from a wide range of backgrounds: that they do know, and what we can act as they do was conducted with an government, safety, sociology, psychol• reasonably expect to learn." all-day-and-evening seriousness that be• ogy, driver education, law enforcement, Over three heavily-scheduled, tightly- lled those modern tales of what happens engineering, and insurance—there were organized days,—from 1:30 pan. on Tues• when a large number of unleashed adult at least 160 insurance executives, includ• day to 3:30 p.m. on Thursday—the sym• males convene in a city far from home. ing 42 whose titles ranked from executive posium was preoccupied with some tough The three-day symposium last March 19- vice-president to chairman of the board. questions: Why does the man behind the 21 at Allstate Plaza In Northbrook, 111., This diversity was linked to the aims of wheel drive the way he does? Why does included neither singers, dancers, nor the symposium. he take risks, have accidents, disobey comedians in any part of its program— "There aren't any true generalists laws, ignore consequences? although several of the speeches were around here—the subject is too complex "Here we were getting into the driver's briskly seasoned with humor. for that," an insurance associate repre• mind, a subject that is largely unex• And when sessions were over for the sentative told this observer. plored," said Costa. day in Northbrook, a northwest suburb "Everybody has a piece of it It's like Faced with many unanswered questions, of Chicago, attendees were transported three blind men trying to describe an the symposium was an ideal place for on a 25-minute bus ride to their head• elephant; one's got the tall, another the its sponsor, the Insurance Institute for quarters for evening events, the Marriott trunk, and the third is probing the mid• Highway Safety, to publicly launch its Motor Hotel, which is about 12 miles— riff.