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August 15, 2000 9:25 AM, EDT

Gerald J.S. Wilde has some disappointing information for government officials hoping to meet their goals of reducing highway fatalities, especially those involving big rig operators.

Expanding driver education programs, improving roads and adding traffic lights and street lights will have no effect on making people operate their vehicles safer and smarter. Instead, he contends, it’s the good economy that makes people drive stupidly.

The professor at Queens University reasons that good economic times change people’s willingness to take risks like no other factor. During an economic boom, people are on the road more, they are in more of a hurry and more goods are moved.

This is not what the folks at the Department of Transportation want to hear as they heighten efforts to reduce the annual number of truck-related traffic deaths to under 2,700 over the next 10 years.

For the full story, see the Aug. 14 print edition of Transport Topics. .