Cars, Rain Barrels, and Chemical Dusters, Oh My!
It’s summer after all, and we all have some spare reading time. With almost 30 posts that may be new to you, there’s enough material to fritter away at least a day. Check out posts that are still as fresh and poignant as ever (entire series here):
- Troubles and triumphs with backyard renovations.
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Less Driving Means Less Dying
I'm a bit late on this, but it's still worth mentioning. Via the NY Times:
Traffic deaths in the United States declined last year, reaching the lowest level in more than a decade, the government reported Thursday. Some 41,059 people were killed in highway crashes, down by more than 1,600 from 2006. It was the fewest number of highway deaths in a year since 1994, when 40,716 people were killed.
You can't attribute the entirety of the decline to reduced driving: law enforcement and vehicle safety both play important roles. But driving less and slower driving matter a lot too. So while I've complained that the recent gas price spike is mostly bad news, this definitely qualified as a silver lining:
Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said the sluggish economy was likely a factor in the declines. He predicted that the combination of a slowing economy and gas prices approaching $4 a gallon throughout the U.S. could lead to further reductions in highway deaths in 2008. Many states have reported double-digit drops in fatalities during the first part of this year.
Nice to hear.
But still: does anyone else find it appalling that more than 40,000 people die on American roads every year? Every time I see these figures, I'm shocked.
A single year of driving yields 10 times as many American dead as five years of war in Iraq.
