Personal loss concerns safety chief

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

When Ellen Engleman Conners' pager goes off, it's rarely good news.

Sometimes, it's a fatal helicopter crash, like the one on Kaua'i last week. Sometimes, it's a 75-car pileup on a freeway in Washington, D.C. Sometimes it's a train accident in rural America.

No matter what, Conners, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, always takes it personally.

"Every one of those deaths means a personal call or knock on the door for some family member," Conners told participants in a highway safety conference in Waikiki yesterday. "It doesn't matter if it's a plane, car or metro line — they've all lost a family member."

Last year, police and officials made more than 42,000 such calls or personal visits to relatives of people killed on the nation's highways, Conners said. Reducing that number will require the personal attention of both the public and government leaders, she said.

"Imagine what would happen if every governor's pager went off every time there was another fatal accident," she said. "Maybe that's what we need to raise community awareness of about this national epidemic."

While the NTSB is best known for investigating aviation accidents throughout the country, it also looks into several thousand fatal boating, train and highway accidents each year.

The board's role is to provide facts, science and data about the accidents, Conners said. It's up to state and local governments to put the information to use.

That means putting in new programs that address driver education, seat-belt use, drunken driving and speeding, she said.

"It doesn't have to be revolutionary changes," she said. "The key is doing things piece by piece, like a patchwork quilt, that make progress."

Gordon Hong, head of the state Transportation Department's Safe Communities Program, said one theme of the Governors Highway Safety Council conference that ends today has been getting different levels of government to work together.

"There's been more emphasis on partnership, getting the engineers and the behavior sides of the industry on the same page," he said. "Now, we're hearing about ways to bring them together."

Ultimately, that will help transportation, health, education, police and businesses unite to find better ways to address traffic safety problems in Hawai'i, he said.

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5460.