Traffic accident field measurements and scale diagrams manual

✍ Scribed by Colin Drury

• Book ID: 102620434
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1985
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 206 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0001-4575
• DOI: 10.1016/0001-4575(85)90022-3

✦ Synopsis

1OI

orthodoxy for policy recommendations and will probably influence the distribution of national resources available to control drunk driving in a suboptimal manner. The Safety Council's nominations to the National Commission largely ignored their own group of experts. the Committee on Alcohol and Other Drugs, and the many holdovers from the Presidential Commission assure continuity of the approach I find so misguided.

The experience of the Presidential Commission on Drunk Driving raises for me some fundamental questions concerning the role of research. and of scientific knowledge generally, in the formation of public policy concerning social problems. I regret that I am unable to answer them in an optimistic way. Programs of research and evaluation do not appear among the Co~~mission's 36 recommendations.

One infers that the members had no qualms about the limitations and gaps in the knowledge base. that they "knew" what tvould work. In the matter of drunk driving we are a long way from the "experimental society" [Campbell. 19753 in which scientific knowledge is mined for proposed countermeasures and scientific evaluative techniques are used to determine their effectiveness. We have, rather. a policy based largely on simpleminded common sense, unverified intuition and deferential respect for vested interests.