The role of epidemiology in evaluating intervention

More than 90 percent of U.S. travel is by motor vehicle. Although our society is highly mobile, we pay for it in property damage, injuries, and death. Part of these losses can be measured (for example, the property damage costs, medical and legal costs, and lost family income), but the truly human costs resulting from the disability, the diminished quality of life, and the pain and grief are unmeasurable. Improvements in vehicle safety features can significantly reduce these human losses. Thus far, safety technology research and intervention have yielded many significant safety features, for example, collapsible steering columns, safety belts, and air bags. Federal safety standards require minimum safety features that are usually unknown to the new car buyer. These include dual braking systems, side door beams for side impact, roof crush strength for rollovers, and fuel tank integrity for fire prevention. Vehicle safety improvements have saved more than 100,000 lives since 1966, when Federal intervention by safety standards began. There are currently many additional technologies that could be used to reduce deaths and injuries, and many others are yet to be invented. Those persons in the public health and the medical fields can help those in the engineering and data analysis fields to make these technological improvements a reality. Help from the medical, economic, and public health professions is needed to conduct research to measure the costs of injuries and the benefits of safety. Such research is needed to focus efforts on those particular safety problems that are most pressing and stsceptible to solution.