IVI's Mission: Prevention of Highway Crashes and the Fatalities and Injuries They Cause
Each year more than 41,000 Americans die as a result of 6 million crashes on our Nation's roadways-the equivalent of 115 each day, or one every 13 minutes. While the magnitude of the highway death toll is shocking, the impact of highway injuries is even more far-reaching. Traffic crashes injured 3.2 million Americans in 2000. Crash survivors often sustain multiple injuries and require long hospitalizations. Crashes cost society more than $150 billion a year and consume a greater share of the Nation's health care costs than any other cause of illness or injury.
Technology offers new safety solutions, but it also poses new problems. We must prevent in-vehicle technology from becoming a dangerous driver distraction. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that driver inattention of all sorts caused 20 to 30 percent of the 6.3 million accidents reported in 2000.
Because driver error remains the leading cause of crashes, cited in more than 90 percent of police crash reports, IVI's mission is to reduce the number and severity of crashes through driver assistance systems. These safety systems, now in various stages of development, assume partial control of vehicles to avoid collisions.
Prevention: A New Direction for USDOT Safety Programs
IVI's focus is to prevent crashes by helping drivers avoid hazardous mistakes. This is a significant new direction for USDOT safety programs, which, in the past, have focused on crash mitigation (that is, alleviation of the severity of crash-related injury to persons and property).
The objectives of USDOT's IVI activities are:
Preventing accelerated distraction, and
Facilitating accelerated development and deployment of crash avoidance systems.
