The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

156 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
government bureau. A new core of bureaucrats would thus be
born, whose job would be to hand out the actual incentive payments
to the states that show the most improvement.
Second, the consumer is not involved in the process. There is
not even a hint in this plan that the purchaser of road services
could, through his or her consumption decisions, affect plans of
the highway managers. In the Kreml plan, the incentive payment
goes to the state government, not to individuals. But can the
prospect of the state government receiving the extra millions of
dollars raise the morale and support of those employees charged
with highway safety to the degree necessary to make serious
inroads on the death statistics?
Third, why should the plan reward a reduction in the accident
rate? Kreml specifically calls for a relation of incentive payments
to safety improvement. This is far from the pattern that
usually takes place in the market.
The basic problem with the thinking of the road authorities is
the approach that they have taken. They ignore the possibility of
employing the usual profit-and-loss business incentives to minimize
highway accidents, and instead have an overwhelming concern
with objective considerations. Unwilling to look at entrepreneurial
potential because they see only government institutions
as viable for highway management, the professionals in the
safety field concentrate on the physical means through which
death rates can be lowered and not on the subjective elements
necessary to mobilize objective factors for this purpose.
A brief survey of the literature shows that these objective conditions
are usually listed under three headings: the vehicle, the
driver, and the road. For example, Campbell5 cites the driver, the
road, and the vehicle as causes of accidents and implores that we
“move on all three fronts.” Oi states the following:
5 H.E. Campbell, “The Wet Pavement Accident Problem: Breaking
Through,” Traffic Quarterly (April 1973): 210.