Debating the issue of traffic safety

In the three presidential debates between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry, at least one national tragedy failed to merit a mention: highway safety.

Since President Bush took office in 2001, more than 170,000 Americans have died in motor vehicle crashes, roughly the same rate as during the Clinton administration. Still, the carnage on highways is not a political issue, not an issue of any type that causes a national uproar.

During the time it took Bush and Kerry to debate such matters as terrorism, war, healthcare and the federal budget in just one evening, an estimated 20 people died on the nation’s roads. In other words, a fatality occurred during every few minutes of chatter.

Of course, comparing the death toll on the highway with that of the war in Iraq or the 9/11 terrorist attacks is like comparing apples and oranges. Still, the numbers are remarkably out of proportion to the attention they get. If every death carries the same price of human loss, there is no question where America bleeds most heavily.

So I recently asked Jeffrey Runge, who was appointed by Bush as chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to give me an assessment of how the current administration is doing.

Runge said he has helped focus a bureaucracy that was trying to solve every problem but making little progress on most. He pointed to such accomplishments as reducing child fatalities from air bags, an issue that erupted early in the Bush administration. Last year, there were no confirmed fatalities involving rear-facing child seats and air bags.

Runge, a medical doctor, also pointed to increased safety belt usage, a drop in alcohol-impaired driving deaths and more safety rules.

“We put out 20 rules in two years,” he said. “I am very proud of that.”

Until this administration, the federal government has failed to reach out to local law enforcement to push routine traffic patrols, Runge said. But it has become a priority under his watch.

“Traffic enforcement is police enforcement,” he said, echoing a well-known theorem among law enforcement. “Bad guys don’t wear their seat belts.”

Highway safety experts give Runge generally good marks, saying he has been a competent and dedicated administrator. But critics say he, like his predecessors in both Republican and Democratic administrations, fails to take strong action.

“It’s not a good record,” said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Highway Safety, a Washington advocacy group. “They have set up barriers of secrecy. They are closing out defect investigations by allowing goodwill campaigns rather than ordering recalls.”

As for Runge’s claim about more safety rules, Ditlow noted that his group successfully sued the safety administration for issuing a weak and illegal rule on tire pressure gauges, following the Firestone tire safety debacle. The suit forced Runge to adopt a stronger rule required by Congress.

“They made a mockery of federal law,” Ditlow said.

Ditlow also faulted Runge for failing to issue a roof-crush standard that would help save lives in roll-over accidents.

Have any presidents done a good job? “If you go back to the Carter administration, yes,” Ditlow said. Well, we all know how much that helped Jimmy Carter when he ran for reelection.

But Brian O’Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a safety group representing auto insurers, lauded Runge as one of the most technically adept administrators at NHTSA for many years.

“It has been almost a throw-away job for somebody who has earned an appointment but does not know anything about auto safety,” O’Neill said. “In this case, we have a trauma doctor who was involved in auto safety issues previously.”

O’Neill said Runge recognized that forcing rules on the auto industry is not always a good practice, given how slow and cumbersome the process can be. Instead, Runge has succeeded in getting voluntary compliance on many safety advances, O’Neill said.

Activists against drunk driving also praise Runge’s efforts to increase enforcement and raise public awareness of the problem. But others worry that he is part of a growing anti-alcohol crusade that goes beyond highway safety issues.

Some experts, like O’Neill, say highway safety should be removed from the political arena and that safety chiefs should be nonpartisan the same way scientists and medical experts are in other agencies.

Runge disagrees. But asked why the American public is not more politically charged over the number of highway deaths, Runge said he has been asking himself the same question since coming into office. After all, hundreds of thousands of families have lost members to vehicle crashes.

He admits he still doesn’t know the answer.

Ralph Vartabedian can be reached at ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com.