Explosive New Book Calls Driving a Major Hazard to the Health of Blacks

LOS ANGELES - Aug. 23, 2022 - PRLog -- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BBP224HZ

On August 4, 2022, A thirty-seven-year-old registered nurse, Nicole Linton, crashed her vehicle into an intersection at Slauson and LaBrea in Los Angeles. The crash killed six persons, including, most heartbreaking a pregnant mother and her one-year-old child, and injured eight others.

Political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson captures the horror and shock of that colossal disaster and much more about the surge in driving deaths in his new book, Warning: Driving May be Hazardous to Black Health. Hutchinson lives one block from the crash site, and he witnessed the crash. He had repeatedly called on local officials to beef up safety controls on that street and intersection.

Hutchinson notes that seven months before Linton's horrendous crash, Peter Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation, likewise, was worried about the mounting death toll in traffic accidents in 2020 and 2021. Hutchinson notes that Buttigieg did not say that Blacks, tragically, were by far disproportionately the greatest victims of those fatal crashes.

The grim numbers told the deadly tale. 38,680 people were killed in traffic crashes in 2020. 7,494 of them were Black. That was by far the highest proportional percentage increase of any race. The increase for white motorists was four percent over 2019.

Hutchinson calls the surge in Black auto fatalities a major public policy hazard to health.  In Warning: Driving May be Hazardous to Black Health. Hutchinson examines why he and many others brand driving accidents a public health peril because they pose a greater danger to Blacks and minorities. He details the tortured history of the fight by traffic safety reform advocates and government agencies for greater traffic safety. He assesses the prime causes of the cyclical fall and rise in vehicle deaths.

He intersperses his assessment of the post-pandemic driving death surge among Blacks with the case of Nicole Linton. She typifies many of the problems and challenges public, officials, local and national government agencies, law enforcement, and vehicle safety experts face in the ongoing battle to reduce vehicle deaths.

Warning: Driving May be Hazardous to Black Health presents an eye-opening look at the mounting peril on the roads for Blacks, as well as Latinos, and Native Americans who also have a disproportionate death rate from vehicle accidents as well as many other Americans. It's more. It's also an urgent call by Hutchinson for greater action.