Highway Safety Funds in Jeopardy, Lives at Stake

You can’t turn on the news without hearing some politico talking about “sequestration.”  If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it literally means to set aside funds before spending them on anything else.  With regard to what’s happening in Washington, sequestration is a package of automatic spending cuts that are part of the Budget Control Act passed in August 2011.  The cuts, which total about $1.2 trillion, took effect on March 1 and continue for nearly decade.  They’re split between defense and discretionary domestic spending, with just about every program impacted except Social Security and Medicaid. 

But there’s another fiscal story playing out in our nation’s capitol and, unlike sequestration, it isn’t getting any airtime on the nightly news.  The monies states rely on to address key highway safety issues such as impaired and distracted driving, occupant protection, and teen driver and motorcycle safety may be cut by more than 50 percent unless Washington acts. 

Why the draconian measures?  Last year, Congress passed a six month Continuing Resolution to keep the federal government funded through March 27.  This legislation, however, failed to include a funding change, known as an “anomaly,” for the performance-based incentive grant programs or Section 405 that states use to improve the safety of all roadway users.  If Congress fails to address this issue, highway safety funding would fall to levels not seen since the 1980s.

I’m all for belt tightening and living within our means, but cutting safety funds isn’t the way to do it.  Crashes annually cost our country $300 billion dollars (nearly two and a half times more than congestion), which equates to a per person cost of $1,522.  The good news is that traffic fatalities have been decreasing in the U.S. falling to a low in 2011 not seen since the late 1940s.  Last year, however, roadway fatalities increased 5 percent, reversing a seven-year decline in annual traffic deaths.  Drunk driving, speeding, a lack of seat belt us, and other behavioral issues were a factor in nearly 90 percent of these crashes.  

Losing state highway safety funds because of a technicality should be unacceptable to everyone who drives, walks or bikes on our roadways.  I urge you to join with me in calling on Congress to correct this “anomaly” so that the Priority Highway Safety Grant Program, which they authorized last year with no increase in spending (part of the surface transportation legislation known as MAP-21), is fully funded.  Lives -- yours, your family’s, your friend’s -- are at stake.