Abstract
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an agency of the United States Department of Transportation, was established approximately 30 years ago to reduce deaths, injuries and costs due to motor vehicle crashes. The first director of the National Highway Safety Bureau (predecessor to NHTSA) was Dr. William Haddon, a physician from the New York State Health Department. Over the years, NHTSA has employed a scientific, data-based approach to address the traffic and motor-vehicle safety problem. The approach employed is similar to the public health approach in (1) using data to identify the magnitude of the problem; (2) identifying the causes of the problem (what are the risk factors?); (3) developing and testing interventions/countermeas-ures to reduce the problem; and (4) implementing the interven-tions/countermeasures, monitoring and measuring their effectiveness in addressing the problem (Centers for Disease Control, 1994).
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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Martinez, R. (1997). Traffic Safety as a Health Issue. In: von Holst, H., Nygren, Å., Thord, R. (eds) Transportation, Traffic Safety and Health. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03409-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03409-5_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-03411-8
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