November 25, 2015
I’m a big fan of mass transit, bikes, and walking, but bad numbers are not the way to get people out of their cars. Someone came up with the statistic that the rate of traffic fatalties is 1.07 deaths per million vehicle miles traveled. Then, the NYT, ABC, NBC, Bloomberg, and AP all picked up this number.
Think about that one for a moment. The average car is driven roughly 10,000 miles a year. If you have 20 friends who are regular drivers, these news outlets want you to believe that one will be killed in a car accident every five years on average. Sound high?
Well, the correct number is 1.07 fatalities per 100 million miles according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, so they were off by a factor of 100. So be careful driving this holiday weekend, but the risks are not quite as great as some folks are saying.
Thanks to Robert Salzberg for calling this one to my attention.
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