Can a Road Safety Alliance Make a Difference and Save Lives?

When most people think about road safety organizations, they think of established organizations campaigning for social and legal change. While these organizations, such as non-profit foundations, are remarkably effective at making a difference, there is another type of institution that can be even more efficient at causing social, legal, and political changes: an alliance.

When various community, public health, and law enforcement organizations create an alliance, they can combine their resources to develop more effective campaigns to generate change and improve motor vehicle safety.

Because all of these organizations come from different backgrounds and perspectives, they are more efficient at campaigning for change and preventing injuries on the road. For example, a police department can use its legal expertise to endorse the development of laws, a large corporation can use its funds and influence to support social change, and a public health organization can help advance the technical aspects of road safety. By delegating and specializing their tasks, alliances can create improved campaigns!

These improved campaigns can hold states more accountable, reach higher levels of the legislature, and support governments when they agree to make changes. Furthermore, because an alliance is a group of organizations, they have more funds, resources, and people than a single foundation.

Advocates: An Alliance Making a Difference

To learn more about how these alliances work, I spoke to Cathy Chase, the President of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. Advocates is a coalition of national consumer, health and safety organizations, law enforcement institutions, insurance companies, and trade associations who are fighting to make roads safer for everyone. They strive to promote and create programs at both the state and federal levels to promote change for highway and road safety.

To accomplish this, Cathy discussed several initiatives that Advocates uses to raise awareness and make national traffic safer. Primarily, the organization issues an annual road safety report which acts as a “report card” for states to see how they’re doing in terms of road safety. These reports outline everything from occupant safety technologies like seatbelts and airbags to teenage driver safety.

Pandemic Distractions

Recently, an increasingly concerning facet of road safety has been distracted driving. During the pandemic, distracted driving increased – especially among teenagers and young adults. Advocates hopes that the release of these annual reports helps state legislatures get a better idea of how they are doing in terms of road safety and the measures they can take to improve it.

Advocates is also a notable supporter of technologies that can improve road safety, such as driver assistance, collision warning systems, automatic emergency braking, blind-spot and lane-departure detection systems, and much more. Cathy hopes that these potentially life-saving technologies can eventually become ubiquitous and mandatory in all new vehicles, not just the high-end ones.

36,000 people are killed, and 2.7 million are injured on roads in the United States every year. Advocates is looking to drive that number down through their numerous campaigns and initiatives.

Listen, Learn, Advocate!

To find out more about the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, their initiatives, and the organizations that form the Advocates' alliance, check out our Surviving Driving podcast with Cathy Chase! And remember to become an advocate for safe roads in your community, put away the phone, and drive safely!