A highway safety advocacy group has found that states have a long way to go before the adoption of a basic set of traffic safety laws becomes nationwide.
Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety earlier this month released its fourth annual highway safety report that rates each state and the District of Columbia on their adoption of 15 of what the group claims are proven-effective laws to significantly reduce death and injury on the nation's roads.
"Last year can best be summed up as mounting deaths and minimal progress," said Advocates' vice president, Jacqueline Gillan.
The American Insurance Association pledged to lobby to enact the measures backed by the Advocates, said Assistant General Counsel David Snyder.
"AIA has representatives in every state capital and we will use the new road map developed by the Advocates to constantly look for targets of opportunity to enact the life-saving legislation recommended by this report," Mr. Snyder said.
But many yardsticks indicate the effort will be difficult.
In 1967, New York was the first state to pass an all-rider motorcycle helmet law, Ms. Gillian noted.
"Forty years later, only 20 states and D.C. have adopted this lifesaving law despite the dramatic, deadly and costly rise in motorcyclist deaths over the past decade when we saw several states repeal their helmet laws," she said.
Advocates found that no state has adopted all 15 traffic safety measures which cover five major areas of safety behavior: seat belt use, motorcycle helmet use, child booster seat use, teen driving and impaired driving.
An analysis of the extent to which the 50 states and D.C. adopted these 15 laws found nearly 300 gaps nationwide at the start of 2006, yet only 22 of these state traffic safety loopholes were closed by the end of the year.
The release of the study coincides with every state legislature opening their 2007 sessions this month, and as motor vehicle crashes continue to be the number one killer of Americans ages four to 34.
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