Letters: Repairing roads does little to reduce highway deaths

There’s no doubt that South Carolina’s roads should be repaired, but not with the false expectation that traffic accidents and fatalities will be significantly reduced.

Traffic accidents can be caused by environmental factors such as bad weather (rain, ice, etc.), vehicular factors (faulty brakes, blown tires, etc.) and occasionally roadway factors (large pothole, bad road design, etc.), but the large majority are caused by human factors such as speeding, driving under the influence, texting while driving, medical problems (heart attack, for example) and just plain old poor driving skills.

Fixing the roads will not change the weather, vehicle safety issues or bad human behavior and driving skills.

The fact is that traffic accidents and fatalities go down when gas prices go way up or we have a recession, because people drive less when they can’t afford to buy gas,

So, let’s fix the roads, but let’s do it for the right reasons.

The roads need to be fixed because like any physical structure, they wear out and need maintenance.

Maybe tire, wheel and shock absorber damage will decrease as a result. Maybe minor traffic accidents will decline.

And maybe I will be proved wrong, but I doubt fatal traffic accidents will markedly decline, because people are responsible for most of those — not the roads.

This story was originally published March 26, 2017 at 6:38 PM with the headline "Letters: Repairing roads does little to reduce highway deaths."