It's a stealth war.
And we're losing. The only good news is that those old folks don't do a lot of driving. And start to become less numerous around the point where they start getting very dangerous. But we still don't do anything more than a bloody eye test in this state, despite statistical reasons to be looking for reasons to vacate old people's driving licenses.
I'm also a bit confused why Hyundai is running an ad campaign that presumably targets one of its demographics: younger people who will have cheaper cars. Those old people will be driving tanks and battleships. It's the whippersnappers who do all the driving who will buy up all the little economy cars that Hyundai sells.
09 May 2010
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2 comments:
Perhaps the 100 million mile graph is mis-leading in that it takes more very young and very old people to reach this magic number of 100 million? Teens and elderly, both make up a very small portion of long distance travelers so you may have as many as 4 to 10 times as many total possible fatalities. There being quite a few 85+ that only drive to the pharmacy or the store. Teens are generally driving to and from school. There are exeptions, but it is quite possible that it is the greater numbers of people making up a given 100 million miles that causes the discrepancy.
If you have 3 times the number of people composing your 100 million miles group and have fewer than 3 times the number of fatalities, then your group is actually a safer group by person. Not by mile driven, but by person driving which is really what operators licenses need to be based on: personal capability.
So what are the fatalities and miles driven per 1 thousand drivers in each group?
I would assume there are a lot of teenage drivers racking up miles, relative to 85 year old drivers, thus explaining that big tail on the graph.
Couple points
If there aren't very many old people and the rate of fatal accidents they are involved is that high anyway, that would lead one to assume that the rate per individual is liable to be high. But, as the study linked noted, much of the reason for this higher rate of fatalities has to do with the ability of the elderly to recovery from injuries or to suffer fatal heart attacks/strokes as a consequence of the stresses of accidents. It's not like these old people tend to plow into each other at 80mph so much as they tend to hit the gas when they mean to brake, run intersections, and importantly, drive too slow (which statistically causes a number of fatal accidents comparable to people driving too fast). The most common problem they cause is multi-car collisions at intersections (a rate statistic that is roughly stable until age 70). Single car crashes, commonly from someone racing down an empty road or driving drunk, go way down, mostly because old people aren't as likely to be driving drunk (or at least driving recklessly drunk).
The link here has per person rates:
http://www.iihs.org/research/fatality_facts_2008/olderpeople.html
It still increases at around 70-75, though it's still not in the real 16-24 range of danger until around 85+.
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