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Abstract
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DeHaven demonstrated that where it might not be feasible to prevent a crash it might still be feasible to prevent, completely or largely, the resultant deaths and injuries.
Small groups of researchers, working chiefly at the Holloman Air Force Base at Alamogordo, at U.C.L.A., and at Cornell, confirmed and extended De Haven's basic findings and conclusion that the body could survive major impacts, in fact, the overwhelming majority of these now fatal on our highways, if properly packaged. This was an emphasis on the amelioration or preventing of an end rather than merely concentrating exclusively on the first step which leads to that end result.
It was not a denial of the importance of collision, that is, crash prevention, but rather a long overdue recognition that crash prevention per se was far too narrow an approach to this serious problem to yield the payoffs in prevention of injuries and death and that the end results could be achieved through recognition of the nature of the entire process and of every step that contributes to the damage to be prevented.
This newer approach leads to a broader and systematic emphasis on all of the pieces of the highway safety problem, each of which must be dealt with intensively. It avoids approaches that focus narrowly or in isolation on only single parts of the overall problem and identifies the many different aspects of the situation which offer major opportunities to reduce the casualties we continue to sustain. |