Editorial: Better driving, tougher laws make SC roads safer
WE’RE ALL MORE than familiar with the fact that the Legislature spent yet another year failing to make our highways safer. What we tend to forget is that all of us can make up for lawmakers’ inaction.
No, we can’t pave over the potholes or widen the curvy roads or add lanes in congested areas or realign dangerous intersections. But as much as we need to improve the physical condition of our deteriorating roads and bridges, the fact is that their poor condition isn’t the most dangerous thing about them.
The most dangerous thing about our highways is our drivers. The most dangerous thing about our roads is us.
S.C. drivers have always been deadly, and this year is on track to be the most deadly in years. As of Thursday, 601 people had been killed on S.C. roads — 107 more than at the same time last year. That’s an increase of 22 percent.
You’ve likely seen the number of the day if you drive on interstates around metropolitan areas, where message boards are heralding it, along with a simple admonition: Buckle up.
That’s because you slash your chance of being killed in a wreck in half by wearing a safety belt. Here’s another way of looking at that: Only about 10 percent of the drivers in our state don’t wear safety belts, yet they account for half of the automobile drivers and passengers killed on our roads.
Conversely, your chance of causing an accident goes up three times if you drive with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent — the level that’s sort of illegal but not really in South Carolina. Combine that fact with state lawmakers who never have been serious about trying to deter drunken driving (hence the law that looks like it prohibits driving with a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level but doesn’t really), and it’s no surprise that more than half of those 601 deaths involved alcohol. Speeding and distracted driving round out the top causes of fatal, as well as nonfatal, wrecks.
So what all of us can do to make our highways safer — even as they continue to deteriorate from lack of maintenance, even as traffic gets increasingly congested due to insufficient capacity — is pretty simple but profoundly important: Don’t drink and drive. Don’t text and drive, or do other things that distract you. Don’t speed. Wear your safety belt. Make sure the kids are in appropriate safety seats. Wear a helmet if you’re on a motorcycle — or a bicycle for that matter, even though the chance of splattering your unhelmeted brain all over the highway is much lower on a bicycle.
To these, the Highway Patrol would add two more items, particularly in the party-time days between now and Labor Day: Call *HP or *47 if you see someone you suspect is driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and go to SCTargetZeroPlan.org and sign a pledge to refrain from driving after drinking, driving too fast and driving without a safety belt.
Last year, the Legislature made it illegal to text while driving. It was already illegal to speed or to allow distractions to interfere with your driving or to drive without a safety belt — although it’s not illegal to drive a motorcycle without the equivalent of a safety belt, a helmet, and that makes no sense.
It’s also illegal to drive when you’re impaired by alcohol, but unlike the rest of our highway laws, our DUI law was written to protect drunk drivers from being convicted rather than to protect the rest of us from dangerous drivers.
It would be great if our Legislature would improve the physical condition of our roads. But if the goal is to save lives, our lawmakers would do far more good simply by removing the most ridiculous barriers they have erected to combating and deterring drunken driving.
This story was originally published August 27, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Editorial: Better driving, tougher laws make SC roads safer."