Do the anti-alcohol and anti-drug crowds ever make an argument without resorting to half-truths, untruths, and assorted skullduggery? You have to wonder.
Take the post below, in which I off-handedly (and imprecisely, and naively) mentioned that there's a deadly alcohol-related crash somewhere in the U.S. every 15 minutes. That factoid is all over the web, and it pops up frequently in the literature of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (actually, I should have written that they claim that a person dies in an alcohol-related crash every 15 minutes; the difference being that one crash can cause multiple fatalities. But I'm splitting hairs with myself here).
So anyway: Someone perishes in a booze-related traffic accident four times an hour, every hour, 365 days a year, right? That would put the annual death toll at more than 35,000. Now, considering that annual U.S. traffic fatalities total not even 43,500 [pdf], that whopping number wouldn't be an exaggeration, would it? The alcohol exorcists, who are after all deeply moral people, wouldn't be so morbid, deceitful, and crass as to invent a huge pile of dead bodies just to make their point, would they?
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know the answer.
Here are the official stats (apologies for not checking these out before). The Department of Transportation — more specifically, the Center for Statistics and Analysis of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration — puts the total number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities in 2005 (the most recent year for which I could find national data) not at 35,000-plus, but at 16,885 [pdf]. NHTSA helpfully adds:
The 16,885 fatalities in alcohol-related crashes during 2005 represent an average of one alcohol-related fatality every 31 minutes [emphasis mine].
What's 18,000 phantom corpses when you're on a holy neo-prohibitionist crusade?
But it gets better. When you and I read about an 'alcohol-related' crash, we naturally assume that the accident was caused by alcohol. Not so, by NHTSA's own frank admission. The agency considers a traffic fatality alcohol-related when either the driver or a "non-occupant" (such as a pedestrian or a bicyclist) is found to have a blood-alcohol concentration of .01 or higher. That's one-eighth of the level at which a driver can be charged with a DUI. In other words, you're not legally drunk until you have a BAC of .08 or more, but a crash counts as alcohol-related when the BAC of one of the people involved is as low as .01.
That's a stupefyingly low threshold. For instance, a woman of average weight and height can easily have a .01 BAC after drinking a wine spritzer, or sipping half a glass of champagne. It's unlikely that she would be even slightly impaired at that level — and to its credit, NHTSA doesn't pretend otherwise, stating
The term "alcohol-related" does not indicate that a crash or fatality was caused by the presence of alcohol.
Kinda puts things in a different perspective, doesn't it?
Of course, you can't make converts to teetotalism, or scare fun-loving people straight, with unvarnished numbers and level-headed language — not if those tools don't convey a dire emergency and, indeed, a nationwide epidemic. Which is why nannies so often feel compelled to practice all kinds of jiggery-pokery.
In case it really needs to be said: No, I'm not soft on drunk drivers. People who liquor up and get behind the wheel reap my straight-up contempt.
Which is pretty much the same emotion I feel for those who, propelled by missionary zeal, make up their own facts, perennially cooking the books with nary a second thought.
I think it was Thoreau who said that if he knew someone was on the way to visit him with the intent of Doing Good, he would run for the woods... come to think of it, he did, didn't he?
Posted by: Martin Owens | Saturday, May 12, 2007 at 02:35 PM