280 by the ritual of blood sacrifice," Anatol Rapoport speculates, "... we may be achieving' by our yearly slaughter of innocents. We would shrink from the idea of drawing lots to decide which 100,000 men, women, and children were to be killed each year. But in effect, we are essentially doing just that, and our explanations of what actually occurs i.e. the notion of 'accident,' where the events are attributed to the will of chance (just as in other cultures blood sacrifices are rationalized as pleasing to the gods)—could well be mere rationalizations." We could, for example, save the lives of perhaps five hundred children a year simply by turning in our guns. Will we? Mr. MOYNIHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. May I introduce my colleagues to my right, Mr. Frank Cantwell, of the Secretary's Office of the Department of Labor, and to my left, Dr. Floyd Van Atta, who is formerly of the Department of Chemical Engineering of Northwestern University, and has worked in safety matters in the State of Illinois, the United Auto Workers, and now is with the Bureau of Labor Standards of the Department of Labor. Senator RIBICOFF. I would like to have some of your ideas about this problem from your experience, what you think the situation is, and what you think we in the Federal Government can do. LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OF THE SAFETY PROBLEM Mr. MOYNIHAN. Sir, I should just like to say that the reason we have done almost nothing about the problem of traffic safety is that we know almost nothing about it. The old remark was never more apt: "It's not ignorance that hurts, it's knowing all those things that ain't so." My own interest in the field of traffic safety, which dates back to the days when you quickened the interest of all of us, and my current work with the Department of Labor in this field, prompt the thesis that what we fundamentally lack is a way of measuring the problem. It seems to me that in the history of all social problems, once there is a general awareness that a problem exists, the first step forward really comes when you learn to measure how much of a problem, what kind, and for whom. We have not taken that step with this problem. There are no standard national statistics in the field of traffic safety that tell us anything you would really need to know if you were setting out to do something about it in a systematic, scientific way. RESPONSIBILITY TO GATHER STATISTICS Senator RIBICOFF. Whose responsibility do you think it is to bring these statistics together? Mr. MOYNIHAN. In terms of governmental responsibility, sir, there is none. Senator RIBICOFF. Should there be? Mr. MOYNIHAN. I think that is the type of decision to which your committee will want to address itself. Should someone be given the responsibility, the measurement of the problem had better be done unless it is done you are talking about à subject that you don't know anything about. Let me put to you a simple question, Mr. Chairman. How many accidents were there last year? Senator RIBICOFF. I would say that generally we think 2 million. Mr. MOYNIHAN. I would say with the greatest respect, sir, the fact is that you don't know, and I don't know, and nobody knows. Senator RIBICOFF. Within the period of a day, you will have the President saying 134 million, the Secretary saying 11⁄2 million, and the Public Health Service saying 3 million injured. So you pose n problem that concerns us. We are trying to find out what we can do on a Federal level. In 1959 you did a very provocative piece talking about where the responsibility lies in the field. I think you reached the conclusion that you felt unless the Federal Government became involved in this i field, not much would be achieved or accomplished. Do you still feel the same way today as you did in 1959? Mr. MOYNIHAN. I certainly feel that until we put into this field the kind of resources which the magnitude of the problem clearly requires we are not going to get any results. Without saying anything more than that, it seems to me that the level of resources has not changed since I was first concerned with this. As a matter of fact, Mr. Chairman, there is a very strong concern here in terms of individuals. You are only going to get results if people work. The man for whom I have the most respect in this field, said to me recently, that he does not think there are 10 scientists working on this subject in America. There are probably fewer today than there were a decade ago. Senator RIBICOFF. Who is the man who comes to this conclusion! Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am sure he would not mind my saying it. Dr. William Haddon, Jr., of the New York State Department of Health, who recently published a very important volume in this field. UNDERSTANDING OF PROBLEM NECESSARY I might say in this connection that the principal obstacle to developing this type of resource application has been, what seems to me at least, a very deep misunderstanding about what kind of problem this is. In the most irrational ways it has been thought to be a problem that involves things like chance and behavior which are perfectly determinable; it is almost a question of morality rather than a problem of morbidity and trauma. Dr. Haddon has recently published a book which I think takes a quantum leap forward in this field in one fundamental sense: that for a long time the theoreticians in the field of epidemiology have been seeking to find the relationship between the problems of accidents and other health problems. They have never until just now truly been able to do this. But I think, in a curious way, the theories of these things have to be worked out before this practice gets very far. It seems very clear from Dr. Haddon's work that they have established that the etiology of accidents is in no fundamental way to be distinguished from the etiology of any other bacterial or viral insults to the body; that, in fact, accidents are a form of disease to be studied and controlled by fundamentally the same scientific methods that have been so effective in other diseases and so conspicuously failing and absent in the study of accidents. The curious fact is that, in all the industrial countries of the world, accidents are now the single largest cause of death for people between 5 and 25 years old. It is a common phenomenon the world over and is no different in that respect from poliomyelitis and cancer. What is different is simply that our attitude toward it is fundamentally a primitive attitude one which regards these events as matters of chance. And, in a sense, they are matters of chance. It is also a matter of chance that you get polio, but our approach to doing something about it has been a very different one. ROLE OF DEPARTMENT OF LABOR Senator RIBICOFF. What role does the Labor Department play in this whole problem of traffic accidents? Do you have a role? Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes. Senator RIBICOFF. What is it? Mr. MOYNIHAN. There are four areas in which we are involved. The first one and the one about which I would have to say we are able to do the least, given our resources, comes from our basic statute, which provides us with the overview of the field of occupational safety in the United States. When this was first established, occupational safety, in effect, Mr. Chairman, meant plant safety. That is what people were talking about. But over the years more and more persons work in motor vehicles. I suppose when the Department of Labor was founded the occupation of truckdriver hardly existed. AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS THE SINGLE LARGEST CAUSE OF OCCUPATIONAL ACCIDENTS AND INJURY Today there are probably two and a quarter million truck and delivery drivers alone. The fact is that probably the single largest discrete cause of occupational accidents today is automobile accidents. I think that is the case we don't have any statistics on the subject. so we really can't say with any certainty. There is one place where we do have statistics which is a second responsibility of the Department of Labor. We are the home agency of the Federal Safety Council, and we have within the Department the Bureau of Employees' Compensation, whereby the Government itself is an insurer on matters of occupational accidents and injuries. Currently, about 27 percent of the occupational fatalities which occur to Government employees arise from motor vehicle accidents. I have some statistics in that area in my testimony. It includes a table giving a time series of this for the last 5 years or so which will interest you. (The material referred to follows:) EXHIBIT 23 VEHICULAR WORK INJURIES SUSTAINED BY CIVILIAN FEDERAL EMPLOYEES UNDER FEDERAL EMPLOYEES' COMPENSATION ACT, 1959-63 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, Mr. JEROME SONOSKY, Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, Government Operations Committee, Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. DEAR JERRY: Attached are tables showing vehicular work injuries sustained by civilian Federal employees under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act Assistant Secretary Moynihan has asked that these be submitted to you for possible inclusion in the record of the hearings. I personally thought yesterday's session was most productive and I am sure Mr. Moynihan shares my belief. With best regards, I am, Sincerely yours, FRANK V. CANTWELL, Legislative Liaison Officer. |