Standards that define or control highway safety have originated from the remedial approach to safety. The remedial approach, with its individualized corrections applied to highway, vehicle, and driver and judgments based on economic cost priorities rather than system organization, has resulted in standards and definitions that do not match each other to permit visualization of the operation. The alternative is to design a highway operating system that obtains safety and energy efficiency through standards that insure mutual adequacy in operations. The method is already in use in astronautics, design of nuclear power generation facilities and, to a lesser degree, rail rapid transit and pipelines. These fields have very low loss rates.

Automotive medicine can contribute to compatible standards in highway safety involving human operator capabilities and human resistance to injuries. Four areas proposed are (1) injury criteria to guide injury reducing design, (2) test standards for human performance, (3) tests for reliability of human performance, and (4) definitions of environments that degrade performance of the human operator.