But the inconvenience to the individual highway user would be 

 intolerable. 



The costs of such a system would almost certainly include decreased 

 personal freedom of all highway users under close regulation. Up to 

 now, society has rejected such an extreme solution, and has accepted 

 the compromise between complete (unregulated) freedom on the high- 

 way and complete (closely regidated) safety on the highway. The prac- 

 tical question facing society is whether the compromise is at a satis- 

 factory balance point between freedom from regulation and freedom 

 from risk of accident; any political action respecting this balance point 

 might logically be subjected to scientific analysis to determine such 

 questions as: What are the costs and benefits of the proposed change? 

 What reduction in the probability of accident and what reduced 

 freedom will result from some new control or technological innovation? 

 At the same time, political analysis might consider such issues as: 

 Does societ}' find the cost acceptable in terms of the benefit? Have the 

 scientific potentials been fully exploited within the limits of tolerable 

 levels of reguJation? 



For practical purposes, accident victims are not merely those self- 

 selected by their own carelessness. Everybody is exposed to some 

 average level of risk, and the total amount of risk per individual de- 

 pends on how much time he sj^ends on the road. Risk is thus a factor 

 of use, and in this sense it is ''equitable." If society at large were to 

 pay all direct and indirect costs of highway unsafely, each reduction 

 in personal freedom caused by safety regulations could be related to 

 actual dollar savings achieved by the reduction of accidents. The gain 

 could be measured and indicated in dollar terms. But the cost — iii 

 human freedom — cannot be measured or expressed in dollars. It would 

 be impossible to say — scientifically — that any given reduction in 

 freedom in order to achieve a given increase in highway safety is 

 warranted b}' the dollar savings. In the language of the systems 

 analyst, science cannot "optimize" for freedom but only for sj^stem 

 performance. As long as society continues to aspire to the political 

 goal of freedom, there will remain an inherent disparity between social 

 goals and scientific goals. 



The role of the political system is to mediate this conflict, to resolve 

 these two sets of goals and standards in a practical way. Somehow 

 the political system has to decide how much freedom ought to be 

 sacrificed, in the interest of achieving some generally satisfactory or 

 tolerable level of safety. The scientist measures quantities, defines 

 alternatives, and states the physical costs and rewards of the alterna- 

 tives. But it is up to the politician, not the scientist, to choose the 

 preferred alternative. Can a scientist advocate a policy decision 

 \\-ithout either (1) discountmg as inconsequential such political 

 values as freedom, happiness, and the like; or (2) accepting responsi- 

 bility for making unscientific comparisons of scientific values with 

 intangible normative values? 



In general terms, the problem of the Congress in dealing with 

 scientific issues of politics appears to be fourfold: First, to identify 

 and delimit the scientific content of political issues; second, to demise 

 intellectual bridges to enable the scientific world to communicate effec- 

 tively with the political world; third, to establish practical political 

 techniques for assessing and validating scientific eWdence; and fourth, 

 to formalize the process by which the quantitative cost/effectiveness 



