Driving Lessons: Exploring SystemstThat Make Traffic Safer

With the exception of modern warfare, no other human activity has destroyed as many lives as driving a motor vehicle. Traffic crashes kill and injure thousands of Canadians every year at an incalculable financial and emotional cost to society—but rather than rush to stem this tide of human carnage, policy-makers seem to accept the ghastly toll as the price we pay for mobility. Driving Lessons takes a fresh look at the complexities of the road transportation system in depth, going far beyond the symptomatic, linear, reductionist approach. It challenges current traffic safety paradigms that simply blame the driver or target "villains and scapegoats" like impaired or high-risk drivers. It takes issue with road transportation system management that sometimes puts mobility ahead of the safety of road users. As one researcher notes, human beings will make mistakes, and accordingly, "the road transportation system must be designed so that people’s mistakes do not have disastrous consequences."