alcohol causing automobile accidents (was something entirely different earlier)

August 11, 2001

I think it is pretty damn obvious that alcohol causes betweeen 2 or

4 and 40 or 50 per cent of automobile accidents. What else do we

need to know? I think it is better to punish everyone who causes

accidents, not just people who are drinking who cause accidents.

>

> >

> > > >

> > > > I researched this a few years ago. Unfortunately I seem to

have

> > > > misplaced my citations, but I found two studies which not

only

> > > > eliminated the obvious silliness (like passengers who'd had a

> > > > few even when the driver was sober) but also corrected for

> > > > bad weather and other known risk factors. One of them

concluded

> > > > that alcohol was in fact responsible for about 2% of motor

vehicle

> > > > accidents, and the other concluded it was about 4%.

> > >

> > >I'm not a hyper-fan of MADD, and I haven't gone to the National

Highway

> > >Transportation Safety Administration's website, but what I have

read in

> >the

> > >past tells me alcohol-related accidents are probably higher

than 4

> >percent.

> > >And I don't think that's " fair " to factor out bad weather and

other risk

> > >factors, inasmuch as sober drivers will have better responses

to weather

> > >conditions.

> >

> > " Correcting for " factors doesn't mean throwing out any results

which

> >are touched by those factors. It means accounting for those

> >factors' influence.

> >

> >Take a simple example: you take 20 sober drivers and 20 drivers

> >with a BAC of .10. You send them all across a treacherous road,

> >and observe that the sober drivers had five accidents while the

> >drinking drivers had eight accidents.

> >

> >If you work for MADD, you announce that there were eight

> >alcohol-related accidents and ignore the sober drivers. If you

> >were trying to deflate, you'd decide that all the drinking

> >drivers' accidents should be thrown out since sober drivers

> >had accidents also.

> >

> > >So, " knocking it down " to 2-4 pct. is, in my opinion,

***disinflating***

> > >alcohol-related traffic accident numbers is a reverse spin.

>

> >But if you knocked them out, then you wouldn't be correcting

> >for them properly.

>

> The one big reason I'd like to see the numbers is to see the

methodology

> behind them.... did they simply " correct, " as you explain it, or

did they

> " knock them out? "

>

> Seeing as how Federal government numbers, ****not**** MADD

numbers, note

> that 40 percent of vehicular fatalities are alcohol related, my

skeptical

> suspicion says the survey you reference " knocked them out. "

> Steve

>

> _________________________________________________________________

> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at

http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

August 11, 2001

> I think it is pretty damn obvious that alcohol causes betweeen 2 or

> 4 and 40 or 50 per cent of automobile accidents. What else do we

> need to know? I think it is better to punish everyone who causes

> accidents, not just people who are drinking who cause accidents.

It has been a long time since I took statistics, but a cursory glance

at those numbers being tossed around here clearly indicates that

sober drivers are indeed responsible for most accidents. The

solution? Perhaps some studies on the charactaristics of sober

people. Do some people deny that they are sober? It may take an all-

out war on sober drivers.

August 11, 2001