Welcome to the FastLane: The Official Blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation

New Motorcycle Safety Rules

As an avid motorcyclist myself, and as the Secretary of the agency charged with road safety, I’m deeply concerned that the pastime I love has such a troubling safety record. Yearly increases in motorcycle fatalities and injuries have plagued the nation for nearly a decade. Yet we’ve seen a rise in the use of so-called “novelty” helmets, which aren’t safety-test or certified, and which do little to protect riders during an accident.

I’m a rider and I’ve been in a crash where I laid down my bike on the blacktop and my helmet took the impact of the crash.  The safety-tested and certified helmet I was wearing, which is battered and bruised and will never be used again, sits in my office as a reminder that it could have been my head that suffered those blows.

The simple lesson is this:  If you’re a rider like me, you’ve got to take responsibility for wearing the right gear, including a DOT certified helmet, so you don’t end up as a brain injury patient.

That’s why today, we’re proposing new safety rules to make it harder for vendors to sell unsafe novelty helmets or for riders to get away with wearing them. Our ultimate goal is to make it easier for riders to know in advance whether the helmet they buy will keep them safe.

We are proposing to do that by requiring manufacturers to place a larger, tamper-proof DOT label on the back of certified helmets that have been through a range of safety tests.  That’s because we’ve seen many cases of people putting fake DOT stickers on novelty helmets that don’t pass muster on safety.  Trust me, I’ve seen the cross section of one of these novelty helmets and you don’t want to be relying on one to protect you in an accident. 

Importantly, our proposal would also strengthen the tests helmets must go through to receive DOT certification, including updated tests on how the helmets hold up during impact, whether objects can penetrate the helmet and how well the helmet stays in place during a crash.

There’s a good reason for the safety changes we’re proposing today.    In fact, fatalities have more than doubled since 1997--increasing by 144 percent.  Motorcycles account for about 3 percent of the vehicles on the road, but they represent 13 percent of all crashes. Yet new data indicate that nearly one in five motorcycle riders in states with helmet laws wear a non-compliant helmet.

Ultimately, safety begins with the riders themselves.  Riders must do more to protect themselves by taking personal responsibility for their own safety, including wearing a DOT certified helmet.

You know, the good news is that more Americans than ever are experiencing the freedom of the open road through motorcycling.  It’s a great feeling to gear up for what might be a quick commute or a longer pleasure ride, to feel the wind in your face and see the blacktop stretching into the distance before you. That’s why I love it and that’s why I ride.  So to all those riders who love it as much as I do, I say gear up and ride safe. 

-Secretary Peters

Learning from Innovators in Action

The Reason Foundation has just come out with a new publication that provides valuable insight into how creative leaders across the nation are tackling traffic and infrastructure problems. Even as we encourage the debate on reforming, refocusing, and renewing surface transportation policy in America, these Innovators in Action are demonstrating better and more sustainable ways to fund, build, and operate infrastructure. In their own words, leaders like the late Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Rick Williamson, Texas Governor Rick Perry, and King County (WA) Executive Ron Sims talk about the fresh approaches they’re using to build roads, replace bridges, and expand transit.

You can find their thought-provoking contributions by clicking on the links below:

• Texas Gov. Rick Perry:  Extensive Challenges Call for Visionary Solutions
• Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson:  Reflections of a Texas Transportation Trailblazer
• King County Executive Ron Sims:  New Tools for Driving Change

Full Report:  2008 Innovators in Action

• Press Release

--Secretary Peters

In Case You Missed It: Star Telegram Editorial on DOT Aircraft Inspection Efforts

As the guardians of the most complex air traffic system in the world, Secretary Peters and the Department are continually finding ways to better our nation’s aviation system.  As this editorial in the Fort Worth Star Telegram notes, we are committed to long term reform of the inspection system, and safety will always be our number one priority.

-Deputy Secretary Barrett

Bipartisan Policy Center Comments on our Reform Proposal

Last week, the Bipartisan Policy Center published a thoughtful look at our proposal to reform, refocus, and renew surface transportation policy in America. While we don't agree with all of the Center's findings, it is definitely worth a read.

-Secretary Peters

Chief Economist Jack Wells: Transportation Spending, An Inefficient Way to Create Short-Term Jobs

Whenever the economy hits a rough spot, politicians often say that we need to spend more on transportation infrastructure to create jobs.  They often cite numbers like “47,500 jobs are created for every billion dollars spent on infrastructure.”  The Federal Highway Administration has indeed done estimates of the number of jobs that are supported by spending on highway infrastructure, and the “47,500 jobs” number comes from one such study done in 1997.  But a billion dollars doesn’t buy as much as it used to, in highways as in most things, and, because that billion dollars buys less steel, concrete, and employment-hours, recent updates of those studies have cut the number of jobs supported by a billion dollars in federal highway spending to about 34,800 jobs. 

Moreover, that number is based on a federal investment of $1 billion, assuming that it is matched by $250 million in state spending.  If we calculated the number of jobs supported from $1 billion in total federal and state spending, the jobs created would fall to about 27,800.  Also, it’s really more correct to say that the billion dollars “supports” 27,800 jobs, because the actual number of new jobs created depends on how much unemployment there is when the highway spending starts.  If most people already have jobs when the construction starts, people will just leave their old jobs to take a new job, and there might be very few new jobs created.  The highway construction jobs might be better jobs than people had before, but they won’t all be new jobs.  It’s also important to understand that not all of these jobs are construction jobs.  About half of the jobs are created in the construction industry and in supporting industries like steel and concrete production, but half of the jobs are in industries that produce consumer goods and services that construction workers and highway engineers buy with their increased incomes – everything from movie production to fast-food services. 

Finally, it takes a long time for these jobs to be created.  Infrastructure construction requires a long series of steps to plan, design, get environmental clearance on, and construct infrastructure projects.  Only about 27 percent of the funds, on the average, are actually spent (“outlayed”) in the first year, while another 41 percent are spent in the second year. 

A billion dollars spent on almost anything will create jobs.  John Maynard Keynes used to say that, if necessary, we should bury pound notes in bottles and bury them, so that people could dig them up.  It’s not very useful, but it does create jobs (digging up bottles).  The real question is, if we have a billion dollars to spend, what is the best thing to spend it on – better education?  Better health care?  Better infrastructure?  What will produce the greatest benefits, short-term and long-term, for our economy?  The real question to focus on for transportation infrastructure is what impact it will have on improving the long-run productivity of our economy, and how that compares with alternative uses of those tax dollars, rather than on the short-run impact on jobs.

-- Chief Economist Jack Wells

Deputy Secretary Barrett: Teen Driving Safety: A National Priority

In the United States, motor vehicle fatalities are the leading cause of death among those ages fifteen to twenty. Approximately 4,000 teens died and 300,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes in 2006. Even though they drive less than other age groups, mile for mile, teenagers are involved in three times as many fatal crashes as all other drivers.

Teens driving on rural roads face a greater challenge. Even though rural roads carry less than half of America’s traffic, they are home to over half of the nation’s vehicular deaths. Worse, the fatality rate for rural crashes is more than twice the fatality rate in urban crashes. For teens, the mix of speeding, not wearing a seat belt, driving while distracted (on cell phones or with other teens in the car), driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, and driving inexperience, often times has a deadly consequence.

As part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Rural Safety Initiative, we have partnered with National Organizations for Youth Safety (NOYS) to develop a new generation of advertising and educational materials to encourage teenagers to drive safely. To do that, we called on the one group in America that actually understands how to talk to teenagers and knows how to get them to do something different….other teenagers.

Last month, I invited six extraordinary teenagers living in rural areas around the U.S. to exchange ideas on new ways to communicate with teens about safer driving by teens. Their enthusiasm and passion for advocating traffic safety issues was clearly apparent. We discussed why teens were not using seat belts each and every time they are in a car, ways to prohibit retailers from selling alcohol to minors, how to better target teen drivers through media and communication campaigns, why teens do not perceive distracted driving (such as text messaging while driving) as a dangerous and also what can be done to better prepare teens through driver education to drive on rural roads which are often gravel instead of paved.

Deputy Secretary Barrett: Responding to Hurricane Gustav

I want to thank the thousands of volunteers and Department of Transportation employees who have pitched in to help evacuate the Gulf Coast, house the 2 million evacuees, and get them back home and rebuild.  Natural disasters always pose major challenges, but this nation is up to the task.

As part of the Federal response to Hurricane Gustav, the Department is making $4 million in emergency relief funds immediately available for Louisiana and Mississippi to help pay for urgent repairs to roads and bridges damaged by floods.  The funds will help the Gulf Coast pay for debris removal and initiate repair contracts.

Secretary Peters has been working with other cabinet agencies and with state governments to ensure a strong response to Gustav, and to the storms looming on the horizon.   She, I, and the Department will continue to do so, and will make more resources available on an as-needed basis.

-Deputy Secretary Barrett