Good News for Auto Industry: Traffic Deaths Plummet

WASHINGTON (March 11) -- Headlines about widespread Toyota recalls and cars that won't stop have dominated automotive news in recent months, but according to one key indicator, the nation's roadways are the safest they've been in more than half a century.

Fewer people died in car crashes in 2009 than in any year since 1954, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported today. The 33,963 people killed on the road last year was 8.9 percent less than the number reported in 2008, according to preliminary data. Overall, traffic fatalities have fallen 22 percent since 2005, and the fatality rate is now the lowest on record.

The report is a rare piece of good news for an auto industry that has been under siege, first from the collapse of major U.S. auto companies and more recently from a wave of recalls by Toyota because of faulty accelerators. And it came as Congress was set to hold yet another hearing stemming from what lawmakers have charged was a failure of oversight by federal regulators in connection with the Toyota recalls.

Federal officials hailed the findings while insisting that a single traffic death is "one too many." They attributed the drop to a range of factors, including improved safety technology, better driver training, safer roads and an aggressive effort to curb the use of cell phones and other devices that distract drivers.

Yet they also acknowledged that a major reason is likely the poor economy.

"Part of it is that people are driving less," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said today on ABC News. "And I think people are not in their car as often as they once were because of the economy."

Since taking over the department 14 months ago, LaHood has launched a campaign against "distracted driving," calling it a "menace to society." But officials inside and outside the department said it's too soon to say if the public-safety effort has driven down the number of fatalities. "It's difficult to quantify. It's very early in the process," a department spokeswoman, Ellen Martin, told AOL News. The drop in deaths, she said, was "not the result of one factor. It's the result of many factors."

The safety factors include stronger roofs, electronic stability control and new collision warning systems, as well as expanded seat belt use across the country. The improvements, Martin said, have come about because of a combination of industry-initiated innovation and increased federal and state regulation.

The National Safety Council keeps its own data on traffic fatalities and vouched for the accuracy of the federal numbers.

"We're really showing the exact same trends," the council's statistics manager, Ken Kolosh, told AOL News. "During a recession you see a substantial decline in the number of fatalities on the road."

Kolosh said the precise impact of the economic downturn on traffic safety won't be known until a recovery fully takes hold, when deaths might rise again. Data kept by the council has shown drops in roadway deaths during other periods of recession in the last 30 years, followed by modest increases when the economy improved.

Still, he said, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has come under criticism from many members of Congress for oversight lapses leading to the Toyota recalls, "can take some credit for helping to make the roadways safer."

At the hearing today before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a leading industry trade group, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, used the recent fatality drop to argue that its chief regulator, NHTSA, was doing a good job. "By the most important objective measure -- the number of fatalities and serious injuries resulting from motor vehicle crashes -- the agency has been very successful," alliance President Dave McCurdy said in prepared remarks.

A spokeswoman for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, Fairley Mahlum, said the organization is "happy that the trend is moving in the right direction," but added, "There is still a ton of work to be done."