Global focus on traffic safety

Dan Kulin

Thursday, April 8, 2004 | 10:53 a.m.

Local traffic safety advocates are hoping that the World Health Organization's decision to make road safety its focus for 2004 will draw attention to the "predictable and preventable" deaths on the world's highways will also help efforts in Clark County.

"The WHO (World Health Organization) has decided to shine a bright spotlight on road safety," Erin Breen, director of the Safe Community Partnership program at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said. "Hopefully this emphasis will get people to pay closer attention while driving."

Breen said the added attention could also help as her group works for tougher driving regulations for teen drivers.

Worldwide, motor vehicle crashes kill about 1.2 million people a year, and that figure could grow to more than 2 million a year by 2020, a study released Wednesday by the WHO and World Bank said.

In the United States, 42,000 people are killed in motor vehicle crashes annually, according to AAA. The economic impact of those crashes was more than $230 billion in 2000. In Nevada, the economic impact of crashes in 2000 was $1.9 billion, AAA said.

Nearly 370 people died in traffic crashes in Nevada last year, state analyst Mike Perondi said.

Calling traffic accidents a public health issue is not overstating the problem, state Public Safety Department spokeswoman Kim Evans said.

"Any trooper you talk to who witnesses the carnage on the highways will tell you it is," Evans said.

She said on any given shift of a Highway Patrol trooper, "I can virtually guarantee you a crash."

Metro Police Detective Dennis Magill, who works with the department's accident investigation division, said traffic fatalities are a "huge problem" in the Las Vegas Valley.

"The town is growing and the infrastructure can't keep up, which leads to congestion. Also, alcohol is served 24 hours, and people get in a hurry and get distracted," Magill said, noting some of the factors that lead to traffic accidents.

"But if people would obey the laws we wouldn't have half these problems," he said.

Breen agreed.

"They're preventable, either someone's speeding, runs a red light, crosses a street mid-block, ignores a crosswalk, if we just paid a little more attention," Breen said.

Through Tuesday, 56 people had died in traffic crashes in Clark County so far this year, Breen said.

For the same period in 2003, 59 people died in traffic accidents here, she said.

"We're thrilled," Breen said about the added attention the WHO will bring to the issue. "It's nice to get this added push on an international and national level."