Ending Traffic Fatalities

Watch the May 15 Infrastructure Week press conference here.

Opening Remarks

Hello. Thank you for joining today. 

My name is Lorraine Martin, and I am the president and CEO of the National Safety Council. 

Let me begin with a few words about the National Safety Council.  NSC is America’s leading nonprofit safety advocate — and has been for over 100 years. As a mission-based organization, we work to eliminate preventable death and injury at work and on the road.   

There is a crisis playing out every day on our nation’s roads. NSC estimates we lost more than forty-four thousand lives to traffic incidents in 2023. That’s more than one hundred people every single day. As president of the Council, I also lead the Road to Zero Coalition, a group of more than two-thousand members dedicated to achieving zero roadway deaths. The Coalition operates on the fundamental principle that the technologies, strategies and policies needed to achieve this goal and eliminate traffic deaths already exist, we simply have yet to fully employ them.  

We’re gathered today with Members of Congress and people personally impacted by the crisis on our roadways, all of whom have dedicated themselves to advocating for roadway safety and put forth policy solutions to help us achieve zero traffic deaths.  

Now let me introduce our first speaker, Representative Rick Larson, the ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. 

Closing Remarks

Thank you to all of our advocates and policy makers for your thoughtful words and for all you’re doing to make people safe on our roads.  

Today the National Safety Council released a new survey which reveals it is not just roadway organizations and advocates who agree with policies and ideas mentioned today – the public does too. 

Conducted by Texas A&M University through a Road to Zero Community Traffic Safety Grant, the survey showed most people agree with the core principles of a Safe System Approach, including the idea that no one should be seriously injured or killed on our roadways and that people make mistakes and our roadway systems should be designed stop those mistakes from resulting in death or serious injury.  

Perhaps most revealing, the survey showed a full seventy-five percent of participants expressed concern about their safety and the safety of friends and family on our roads. When three-quarters of our citizens fear for their safety as they move about our country and worry that every walk, ride or drive could result in tragedy, we can no longer afford to ignore this issue.  

We commend the adoption of the National Roadway Safety Strategy by the US Department of Transportation and we are here on Capitol Hill to ask our legislators and policy makers to support safe laws and practices and help us put an end to this crisis.

Thank you.