Subseries 13 - Traffic Safety

0.4 m of textual records

Michael Trebilcock and I worked on Traffic Safety as our contribution to Stage Two of the CIAR’s Sanctions and Rewards Project (see Series 5, Subseries 12). We started in 1985 and worked on the project on and off for the next four years. In the early stages we were hoping that George Priest of Yale would be part of the team, but this didn’t work out (file 2). Kent Roach worked on the project as a summer student and became a joint author. He did a directed research project on drunk driving in his third year at the Law School (file 29). A number of persons were actively involved with the project (files 3-12), particularly Ezra Hauer of Engineering (file 4). We also had extensive contact with two persons, John Adams and Gerry Wilde (files 3 and 7), who supported the concept of ‘risk homeostasis’ which suggested that changing the rules or improving safety didn’t result in the saving of lives. We didn’t accept this intriguing thesis, but rather were greatly influenced by William Haddon’s ideas on an epidemiological approach to traffic safety (file 18). My brother in law, Barry Pless, an epidemiologist at McGill, also contributed to the study (file 5), as did many others.

I gave a number of talks on the subject (files 13-16). We also conducted a minor test to see what it felt like to be over the legal limit (file 19). The files contain the many drafts that we did over the years (files 20-39). They do not contain any of our notes, although some of mine are contained in the spiral binders in the Sanctions and Rewards boxes. The U of T Press published the study as a chapter in Securing Compliance and as a separate volume, Regulating Traffic Safety (files 40-42). We did not go on to a Stage Three project (file 45).

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