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Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety (Advocates)

ESTABLISHED: 1989
EMPLOYEES: 9
MEMBERS: 22 member groups
PAC: None

Contact Information:
ADDRESS: 750 First St. NE, Ste. 901 Washington, DC 20002
PHONE: (202) 408-1711
TOLL FREE: (800) 659-2247
FAX: (202) 408-1699
E-MAIL: advocates@saferoads.org
URL: http://www.saferoads.org
PRESIDENT: Judith Lee Stone

WHAT IS ITS MISSION?

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, often simply referred to as Advocates, is a national alliance of insurance companies and consumer, health, and safety organizations. Its core mission is to save lives and reduce injuries on U.S. roads and highways—a goal sought primarily through lobbying for the adoption of federal and state laws, policies, and programs. A secondary goal is the reduction of financial burdens—property loss, medical and emergency bills, productivity loss, and other costs—placed on insurers and public agencies as a result of road accidents. Advocates also recruits other groups and agencies to participate in its efforts. In this way, it hopes both to maximize the effects of its actions and avoid duplicating the efforts of the nation's various public policy groups.

HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?

Based in Washington, D.C., Advocates is an organization composed of equal numbers of insurance organizations and consumer, health, and safety organizations, each of which has at least one member serving on the organization's board of directors. Non-insurer groups include Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the Emergency Nurses Association, the Police Foundation, and the Consumer Federation of America. Insurance organizations on the board include private companies such as State Farm, Prudential, Kemper, and Liberty Mutual, as well as agent organizations such as the Alliance of American Insurers and the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents. The insurers provide virtually all of Advocates' financial resources, but all member organizations participate equally in establishing program and policy priorities; it is for this reason that Advocates is careful to balance each funding group with a non-funding group. If the board cannot establish consensus on an issue, the issue is dropped from consideration.

The president of Advocates is elected periodically by the board (since the group's formation in 1989, there has been only one president, Judith Lee Stone). The president conducts the board's program and policy-making activities, but also oversees the activities of Advocates' small professional staff and its corps of consultants. The president pays the group's bills, administrates salary and payroll, and serves as its primary spokesperson.

The professional staff is divided into Advocates' three major areas of interest. One group deals with federal laws and policies that affect highway safety; an example is Advocates' effort to promote stricter standards nationwide for the blood-alcohol content that constitutes "drunk driving." Another group works with issues and laws at the state level, such as licensing laws, while a third group focuses on regulatory issues.

In the states of California, Connecticut, and New York, state coalitions have been formed with strong ties to the national organization. To reduce traveling and research expenses, Advocates maintains a number of consultants in these states. Consultants monitor issues of interest to Advocates in their prospective states, report such happenings to the national organization, and lobby state legislators and regulators according to the program and policy guidelines of the group.

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

Advocates pursues its goals through a number of specific strategies. Each year, the board of directors establishes a program plan to identify opportunities for affecting national laws and policies. After identifying these opportunities, the board establishes its priorities and determines how its resources will be distributed. Because of its modest budget, Advocates does not contribute directly to the campaigns of specific political candidates; the group spends money primarily on the activities and products of its staff. In the early stages of an Advocates' policy effort, the staff is responsible for tracking legislation, researching and analyzing issues, and composing reports for the board's consideration.

Once a program plan has been established, the staff develops a strategy for the group's efforts, and may attempt to influence policy in a number of ways. Staff members participate in coalitions that may already exist for the promotion of a specific policy, or they organize new ones as needed. They also lobby federal and state legislatures for new or different laws or regulations, and file technical comments on regulatory actions that affect road and highway safety. One of the group's most high-profile methods for influencing legislators and regulators is the formal petition, submitted on a particular issue. An example is the petition submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, requesting a revision of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) regarding side-impact protection for automobile passengers.

In addition to maintaining close ties at the legislative level, Advocates also attempts to reach out to the public, primarily through media relations. The group also publishes a newsletter and various fact sheets, all of which are available to the public. To make sure Advocates has the greatest possible impact at the local level, the staff maintains a database of grassroots activists who are interested in highway safety issues, and who may be recruited for a particular campaign.

PROGRAMS

There are no formal, ongoing education or training programs operated by Advocates; its programs are formulated in response to areas of current interest to both its members and the general public, and its efforts are organized appropriately. According to the group's fact sheet, "About Advocates," the group's current efforts include, but are not limited to vehicle occupant safety and drunk driving.

As part of its efforts to increase vehicle occupant safety, the organization targets three areas: the use of passenger restraints; safe automobile design; and safe driving. Advocates promotes laws and regulations concerning the manufacture and use of safety belts, child safety seats, air bags, and motorcycle helmets. The group also encourages improved head injury and side-impact crash protection; improved safety standards for light trucks and vans; rollover standards for high-centered vehicles, including sport utility vehicles; and protection standards for pedestrians and child passengers. As part of its efforts to decrease the number of highway accidents, Advocates promotes reasonable speed limits and increased enforcement, as well as voluntary restraints on the part of the automobile industry in portraying excessive speed in its advertisements.

Impaired driving remains one of the organization's biggest concerns. Advocates seeks a uniform .08% blood alcohol content (BAC) as the drunk-driving standard law in all states; a lowered BAC tolerance for young drivers; and the administration of sobriety checkpoints by local law enforcement. In conjunction with these lobbying efforts, Advocates participates in a few programs that involve a number of other organizations. For example, Advocates participates in the National Drunk and Drugged Driving (3D) Prevention Month Coalition, which stages its 3D Month every December as a means of educating younger drivers. The 3D Month coalition involves over 50 member organizations, including policy groups such as Advocates, automobile manufacturers, law enforcement groups, and federal agencies such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

BUDGET INFORMATION

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety is funded entirely by its member insurance companies, which are required to pay a minimum annual installment of $100,000. Because some of the 11 member companies pay slightly more, however, Advocates' annual budget is currently about __BODY__.4 million.

HISTORY

Highway safety has been a high priority in the United States since the advent of the gasoline-powered automobile, but in the early twentieth century it was a cause that was championed by groups that were either small in size or that had only a peripheral association with the issue of road and auto safety. In addition, these groups did not have long-term evidence about the effects of unsafe road conditions, insufficient regulations, and weak law enforcement.

This situation changed dramatically in the mid-1980s, when a team of public-health professionals from the nation's most prestigious institutions wrote and published a study called Cost of Injury in the United States: A Report to Congress. The report clearly showed that the leading cause of injury in the United States was the motor vehicle accident. The real and measurable costs of these accidents were set forth in black and white for U.S. lawmakers to see.

Using this study as a keystone, the highway safety movement was then able to encourage legislative action by reminding the public that road safety is an issue with a financial effect on virtually every U.S. citizen, and that delaying public policy changes to reduce these injuries could not be justified. In 1988 the various groups with an interest in highway safety began to discuss a stronger, more unified organization. These insurance and consumer groups recognized the need to look past their differences and to formalize their relationship in order to strengthen the movement. In 1989 Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety was formally created, and by the following year had secured office space on Capitol Hill and hired its professional staff. According to 1992 statistics the highway safety movement made an impact within its first four years of formalization: the nation's highway death toll dropped 5.5 percent in that year, to 39,250—the lowest death rate in 30 years.

Many of Advocates' early efforts were focused on building and expanding its associations with other groups. In 1994 it developed a specific program, the Grassroots Outreach Project, to engage large national organizations in their causes. Through these efforts, Advocates has formed new alliances with powerful, high-profile groups such as the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and the Epilepsy Foundation. In 1995, due to the efforts of Advocates at the local level, the first state coalitions began to form. Permanent state coalitions exist today in California, New York, and Connecticut.

In the second half of the 1990s, Advocates began placing particular emphasis on the role of alcohol and drugs in motor vehicle accidents, and on the disproportionate amount of younger drivers who are involved in such incidents. In pushing for a national standard on permissible blood-alcohol content (BAC) and tougher state licensing laws for younger drivers, Advocates has begun to shape the way in which the federal and state governments deal with drunk drivers and those teenagers who lack experience behind the wheel.

CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES

Petitions and lobbying efforts on the part of Advocates and other groups are often the first step toward the passage of new laws, and when an ordinance, law, or regulation concerning vehicle or highway safety is under consideration somewhere in the United States, the organization is almost sure to be involved. In March of 1998, for example, after years of lobbying on the part of Advocates and other groups, Congress established a national mandate on state laws governing legal blood alcohol levels for drivers. The standard was attached as a rider to a federal highway spending bill. According to the bill, any state that did not establish a .08 percent maximum blood-alcohol content (BAC) for drunk driving would lose its federal highway funds. Other issues, including truck safety, impact standards, child restraint standards, and lower BAC tolerances for younger drivers, continue to be important issues that Advocates attempts to keep in the public eye.

Case Study: Graduated Licensing

In the late 1990s one of Advocates' most fervent battles was fought in the area of licensing teenage drivers. Citing a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) statistic that approximately 35 percent of all deaths for young people ages 15 to 20 are the result of motor vehicle crashes, and that the crash rate for that age group is four times as high as for adults over the age of 21, Advocates and other groups such as the American Automobile Association (AAA) began to promote the concept of graduated licensing—a system designed to phase young drivers into acquiring full driving privileges as they mature and develop their driving skills and attitudes. Because the death rate among younger drivers has been perceived to result from both a lack of experience and a greater tendency toward risky behavior, the point of graduated licensing is to ensure that early driving experience is accumulated under low-risk conditions.

In the slightly more than 20 U.S. states in which graduated licensing laws have been adopted, the particulars of the system have differed, but the idea remains the same: young drivers first receive a learner's permit, and then move on to an intermediate license, a period in which the drivers' activities are restricted. State laws vary: most limit the number of passengers allowed in a car driven by an intermediate driver; some require that the driver be accompanied by an adult; and some allow no driving at all after dark. In nearly all states the intermediate license involves zero tolerance for the use of alcohol. After this intermediate period has been passed without an accident or traffic violation, the driver can take another examination to receive a full license with adult provisions.

Graduated licensing systems are fairly new in the United States, and few statistics have yet been collected to support them. According to a 1991 study in New Zealand, whose experiments in graduated licensing first inspired Advocates to take up the cause, vehicle crashes and fatalities dropped by nearly one-third, only six months after its graduated licensing laws went into effect.

While few young drivers, or their parents, openly disagree with the concept of graduated licensing, the fact remains that as of 1999 only about half the states had adopted such laws. The reason most often mentioned for states being slow to adopt the laws is convenience: although teenagers do not have a lot of political clout, parents may resent the lack of flexibility and freedom involved in having a teenager who can drive anywhere at any time. State lawmakers are generally hesitant to pass unpopular laws that restrict an activity as universal as driving.

An example of initial resistance to graduated licensing occurred during the summer of 1998 in California, shortly after that state passed one of the strictest graduated licensing laws in the nation. Some parents, expressing annoyance with the state's attempt to dictate when and with whom their children could drive, vowed to ignore some of the provisions of the law, especially the one that required 50 hours of parent-supervised driving practice. In spite of these objections, most parents—and many teens—remain supportive of the principles behind graduated licensing laws, and the trend toward the states' adoption of them seems likely to continue.

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

Because of the common perception that government laws and regulations impacting both the nation's highways and auto safety constitute a burdensome interference into the lives of private citizens, the efforts of Advocates sometimes fail to influence legislation it considers to be harmful. In recent years perhaps the most notable example was the 1995 repeal of the national 55 miles-per-hour speed limit, included as part of a highway spending bill. After the bill was signed into law by a reluctant President Bill Clinton (who did not want political squabbling to delay highway funds from reaching the states), several states increased highway speed limits to 65 mph or more. Through the urging of the president, as well as groups such as Advocates, many state legislatures decided to keep the 55 mph speed limit in place.

In any given year, however, Advocates scores numerous victories that have a huge national impact, such as the national drunk-driving standard established in the spring of 1998 that imposes a .08 percent BAC for drunk driving. The group also cites smaller achievements that, while infrequently make headlines, have a lasting effect on drivers. In November of 1998, for example, the group announced that the NHTSA had granted its petition for improving the level of protection for auto passengers injured when the vehicle in which they were riding was struck from the side. The agency planned to do this by developing stricter manufacturing standards for equipping vehicles with side-impact air bags or other dynamic safety technologies. As part of its convincing argument, Advocates cited both statistics (more than one-third of the serious-to-severe injuries suffered in passenger vehicle crashes in the preceding 12-month period were the result of side impacts) and public opinion (81 percent of the American people wanted the government and auto manufacturers to upgrade side-impact protection, according to a Harris poll.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

One of the areas in which Advocates believes there is still much work to be done is in the passage of motorcycle helmet laws nationwide. As of 1999 only 25 states had laws requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets, a situation due largely, Advocates maintains, to the circulation of myths about the use of helmets by those who simply do not want to wear them. This will be a battle in which Advocates will play a major role in the first years of the twenty-first century.

Advocates also points out that the use of bicycles is becoming increasingly more than merely a recreational activity in the United States; it is a serious mode of transportation—especially in urban areas—that should be considered part of the traffic mix. The education of bicyclists and those who share the roadway with cyclists, the promotion of bicycle helmet laws, and roadway and trail improvements to accommodate cyclists are all planned priorities for Advocates for 2000.

GROUP RESOURCES

The best source of information about Advocates is the group's Web site at http://www.saferoads.org. The site contains general information about the group, as well as press releases, fact sheets, policy statements, special reports, texts of recent petitions and testimonials, and links to its member organizations. The site also contains numerous links to other safety-related sites.

Specific requests for information can be directed to the manager of public affairs for Advocates, who can be reached by telephone at (202) 408-1711; fax (202) 408-1699, or E-mail chickey@saferoads.org.

GROUP PUBLICATIONS

Advocates' newsletter, Safety Advocate, is published three to four times per year, primarily as an update of the group's policy efforts and of issues that are a growing concern. In addition, the group publishes a number of fact sheets and press releases, many of which are organized by topic on the Advocates' Web site. For further information about publications, contact the public affairs manager.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrams, Jim. "Lobbyists Score in Fight Over National Drinking Standards." Seattle Times, 6 April 1998.

Eastman, Joel W. Styling vs. Safety: the American Automobile Industry and the Development of Automotive Safety, 1900–1966. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984.

Hazleton, Leslie. "Fear is Increasing on the Roads, But That May Not Be a Bad Thing." New York Times, 16 October 1997.

Set Up a Simple Highway Safety Program and Save. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1997.

Wald, Matthew. "Balancing Costs and Benefits of Highway Improvements." New York Times, 27 March 1998.

——. "Preaching Caution, Officials Allow Cutoff Switches for Airbags." New York Times, 19 November 1997.

——. "Reduce Risk in Crash: Front or Back, Use Belt." New York Times, 7 September 1997.

——. "Where Every Day They Hit the Wall." New York Times, 21 October 1998.

Wilson, Marshall. "Higher Speed Limits, Lower Death Rates: Statistics Surprise Many Observers of State's Highways." San Francisco Chronicle, 2 November 1998.