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Monday, Jan. 14, 2013 | 3:05 p.m.
CARSON CITY — Nevada should add traffic laws to curb the rising number of highway deaths, according to a national safety group that ranks the state in the middle of the pack for safety.
In its 10th annual report, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety suggest Nevada adopt such things as an ignition interlock law, more restrictions on teen drivers and a primary seat belt enforcement law.
Jacqueline S. Gillan, president of the coalition based in Washington, D.C., said that “traffic safety laws to protect children and teens, keep drunk drivers off of our roads and stop distracted driving have the potential to save thousands of lives and billions of dollars annually.”
State officials reported last week that 258 people were killed in traffic crashes in 2012, up from 246 in 2011. About half of those killed were not wearing a seat belt, officials said.
Rudy Malfabon, director of the state Department of Transportation, said his agency is not sponsoring a primary seat belt law but would support it if it is introduced in the Legislature.
Now, police can only issue a citation for not wearing a seat belt if the motorist is stopped for another violation. A primary seat belt law would permit officers to stop cars for the sole reason of people not being buckled up.
Nevada, according to the safety group, has eight of 15 recommended traffic safety laws.
New York is rated tops with 13, and South Dakota ranks last with three.
Gillan said a 2012 federal law provides financial incentives for adopting the recommended safety laws.
One recommendation is Nevada pass an ignition interlock law. Drivers convicted of drunk driving would be required to have the device in their vehicles, which could not be started without passing a breath-analyzer test.
The group also recommends Nevada put restrictions on night driving by teens. It said 20 percent of teens killed in crashes occur from 9 p.m. to midnight.
Nevada should also require booster seats for children up to 7 years old, the group said.
Thank you, Washington bureacrats, for reaching your long, nanny-statism all the way across the country into Nevada. Haven't you learned (yet?!) that you cannot legislate intelligence, you can only make efforts to educate. And when those efforts to educate fail, government should get the heck out of the way.
But guess what? There are little to no efforts to educate drivers in Nevada (or any other state, for that matter) and our licensing system is a joke that borders on failure.
If you want better drivers and fewer traffic deaths, then invest in better training and licensing procedures. Annual in-car testing is a start; more legal restrictions and punitive action is a failure to launch. In any case, Nevada should remember what it's like to stand up to the loving smothering of Mommy Washington and say, thank you, but no thanks.
I would also like to add another cause to this mix... frustrated driving. This is when the motorist becomes frustrated with traffic controls impeding their trip to their destination unnecessarily. The result is drivers make erratic and dangerous maneuvers in order to shorten their trip length. I see this EVERY SINGLE DAY!
The traffic lights in this city stop your travel 80% of the time. Just try going east/west or north/south on any road in this city and you will be stopped at 80% of the lights when going in a single direction! Drivers get frustrated and try to catch the lights by speeding or running them at the last second out of frustration of being stopped so frequently. I have seen people cross 3 lanes to make a turn because the light going forward is stopping them yet again!
If the lights were set to allow traffic to flow at the posted speed limit in a single direction, people would be less frustrated, get better MPG, produce less pollution from start/stop/idle times, reduce speeding and red light running. It would also get them where they are going in less time reducing traffic on the streets! Las Vegas city lights are the worst I have seen in any state I have driven in! Do we even have traffic engineers? What do they do everyday besides collect a paycheck? They certainly don't improve the flow of traffic on las vegas city streets!
Every time you stop a vehicle at a light you create a possible Accident scenario: rear end collision, red light runner getting hit by cross traffic, pedestrian getting hit, Cars changing lanes often to try to catch the next light, speeding or driving too slow. Putting green in front of cars more often reduces the number of opportunities where accidents occur and smooths out the flow of traffic.
We need better enforcement of safety laws and I endorse that! We also need to change things that contribute to the causes and behaviors that create accidents.