Lies,
Damned Lies and Statistics
Information
courtesy of Lawrence Taylor - DUIblog
As
part of its 25th Anniversay celebration, the President of MADD is
once again touting the organization's success in the following recent
press release:
MADD
is cautiously optimistic about the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration's (NHTSA) report showing a 2.1 percent decrease
in alcohol-related traffic fatalities from 2003 to 2004. NHTSA's
preliminary Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data estimates
that 16,654 people died in preventable alcohol-related traffic
crashes, compared to 17,013 alcohol-related traffic fatalities
in 2003....
We
believe that the slight decrease in alcohol-related traffic fatalities
is linked to increased law enforcement efforts and 13 states starting
to enforce the .08 percent Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) law
in 2003. As of July 2004, all states have passed the .08 BAC law,
but Minnesota's law will not go into effect until August of this
year.
As
for what constitutes "preventable alcohol-related traffic crashes",
who knows? However, another set of statistics on MADD's own website
indicates that the numbers for 2004 are only an estimate -- as opposed
to the confirmed fatality statistics for the previous 24 years of
MADD's existence. And if one looks at all of those numbers, it appears
that alcohol-related fatalities have remained fairly constant for
the past decade. In fact, the fatalities estimated for 2004 are
about the same as for 1997 and 1998 -- and actually higher than
those for 1999.
If,
as MADD claims, the slight decrease last year was due to 13 states
starting to enforce the .08 law in 2003, why didn't the fatality
rate decrease during the past decade -- when the other 37 states
adopted and started enforcing the .08 law? And as for "increased
law enforcement efforts", there is no evidence (or statistics)
that enforcement in 2003 was any different than in, say, 2002 or
2001.
And
as for the claim that "16,544 people died in preventable alcohol-related
traffic fatalities", read in my earlier post how these statistics
have been made to sit up and bark.
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