Punishment as a device for accident prevention. Deterrent effects of traffic enforcement.
From the very beginning of road traffic history people understood that without any laws or regulations, all movement on the roads would be in the so-called “state of nature,” which means that the molecules within an environment, represented as cars on the city streets, would be in constant and uncontrolled motion, allowing for random collisions and accidents. The existence of this traffic’s tendency towards chaos contributed to the evolution of traffic environment – first traffic legislation, the “Locomotive on Highways Act”, was adopted by the British Parliament in 1861 and limited the weight of allowed vehicles to 12 tons as well as imposed a 10 mph speed limit (Ross, 1993). Furthermore, more and more elements and control devices have been added to the system, including first license plates in France in 1893, first driver license in the U.K. in 1904, and the first traffic light in Ohio in 1914 (Legge et al., 1993). Creation of laws and rules raised the need for their enforcement, since, as it is widely known, laws are being broken as long as they exist.
In order to prevent people from breaking the law, authorities have to come up with reasonable punishments depending on the severity of a violation. The key aspect in any kind of punishment, as the research shows, is the certainty of a sanction, since it acts as a much stronger deterrent than an increase in the severity of the punishment (Purssell et al., 2012). For example, the law allows police officers to administer tests for screening purposes at the site of a potential traffic violation before arrest (Porter, 2013), which increases the likelihood of detecting illegal behavior (Ritchey et al., 2011). Furthermore, immediate consequences produce a much stronger deterring effect on drivers than those that have to be reviewed before being imposed, which usually happens long after the violation. Finally, the deterrent effects of a certain punishment can be separated into two categories: specific and general (Purssell et al., 2012). In the case of drinking and driving, for instance, the specific effect is that the sanctioned driver will most likely never drink and drive again, and the general part is that people become more aware of the legal sanctions, which prevents people who might otherwise drink and drive from doing so. This leads to another key aspect of the “punishment” concept – the need for public awareness to achieve the deterrent effect. In the modern world, mass media along with high-visibility enforcement form a current that is powerful enough to keep the population informed about the laws and sanctions associated with them (Alonso et al., 2015).
Figure 1: Example of deterrent effect using road signs
Source: The Policy Studies Journal
Figure 2: Example of deterrent effect using road signs
Source: The Policy Studies Journal
Of course, it is true that legislation against impaired driving is the best way to prevent crashes, and the statistics are in agreement with this fact. Driving prohibitions and vehicle impoundments for blood alcohol content above 0.08% along with alcohol counseling programs reduce impaired driving recidivism by about 8-9 % (Alonso et al., 2015). Moreover, enforcement of the laws in British Columbia, for example, reduced the amount of alcohol-related traffic crashes from an average of 113 in September 2010 to 68 in September 2011, which is an impressive 40% decline (Purssell et al., 2012).
On the other hand of the issue, it is important to look at the situation from the perspective of pedestrians, since pedestrian deaths due to traffic accidents do not necessarily mean that the driver was at fault, since, for instance, the term “recklessness” can be used to characterize both a driver and a pedestrian. In fact, statistics show that the fault lies within the pedestrian in the majority of cases, and “two of every three pedestrians killed by motor vehicles were either violating a traffic law or acting in an obviously unsafe manner (Wittels, 1949).” About 75% of pedestrians killed in traffic accidents were victims of their own carelessness (Wittels, 1949), which means that our ultimate goal, the goal of achieving zero traffic fatalities, has to be focused and concentrated at the intersection of raising both driver’s and pedestrian’s awareness of traffic laws, regulations, and sanctions.
Figure 3: “Portrait of a man begging for trouble. Besides ignoring the comparative safety of the crosswalk, he is hazardously catching up n his reading en route.
Source: Saturday Evening Post
Works Cited (MLA Format)
Alonso, Francisco, Juan Pastor, Luis Montoro, and Cristina Esteban. “Driving under the Influence of Alcohol: Frequency, Reasons, Perceived Risk and Punishment.” Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention & Policy Journal 10.1 (2015): 1-9.
Legge, Jerome, and Joonghoon Park. “Policies to Reduce Alcohol-Impaired Driving: Evaluating Elements of Deterrence.” Social Science Journal 75.3 (1994): 594-606.
Porter, Lauren. “Trying Something Old: The Impact of Shame Sanctioning on Drunk Driving and Alcohol-Related Traffic Safety.” Law & Social Inquiry 38.4 (2013): 863-91.
Purssell, Roy, and Jeffrey Brubacher. “Alcohol-related Traffic Fatalities Declining.” British Columbia Medical Journal 54.2 (2012): 90-91.
Ritchey, Mark, and Sean Nicholson-Crotty. “Deterrence Theory and the Implementation of Speed Limits in the American States.” The Policy Studies Journal 39.2 (2011): 332-34.
Ross, Laurence. “Punishment as a Factor in Preventing Alcohol-related Accidents.” Addiction Journal 88.1 (1993): 997-1002.
Wittels, David. “They Ask to Be Killed.” Saturday Evening Post 221.27 (1949): 11-66.
