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I sure hope you are not in any field that requires sound scientific judgement.
The results are interesting but not conclusive of too much in terms of the root cause of the differences between states, just that there *are* differences. As you and others stated, there is no data gathered about other relevant factors such as number of days per year of "hazardous" driving conditions (weather), average speed per mile driven, breakdown of miles driven on limited access highways (safer to drive per mile driven) versus not, number of miles driven in passenger vehicles versus commercial vehicles, etc. The results are unambiguous but indicate a need for further questions and further investigation. If I were the transportation official in one of those red states, I would want to investigate further.
Last edited by ParkTwain; 03-02-2009 at 10:33 AM..
I'm not the one who is claiming that voting patterns determine the fatality rate in car accidents.
All states have urban and rural areas in them. All states have differences in terrain within each state. All states have different concentrations of trauma centers in different areas within each state.
Yes, but generally speaking, red states have a higher percentage of the population living in rural areas. Rural areas have a number of factors which lead to a higher fatality rate than urban areas.
The fact that the CDC reported numbers for entire states instead of breaking them down to specific regions within each state means you have a fairly good representation of the varying physical conditions within each state. These different factors you mention have balanced themselves out to produce a composite result: the fatality rate per capita.
I'm willing to bet that the urban areas of red states having a lower fatality rate than the rural areas and the rural areas of blue states have higher fatalities rates than the urban areas.
So explain this: why is it that the leaders in fatality rates per capita are overwhelmingly red states? Are terrain conditions worse in red states than in blue states? Many blue states are in the north, where wintry weather has a significant adverse impact on road safety, while many red states are in the south and experience milder winter. If we are to go by your logic, blue states should even have worse fatality rates. But that's not the case.
Not just weather. Weather almost certainly plays a big role in Midwestern and mountain states, but less so than the South. Also look at things like how many big rigs on the road, they get into a fair amount of accidents and you're less likely to walk away from a car crash with semi and from a Honda Civic.
Are there fewer hospitals in red states than in blue states? Is the response time to emergencies slower in red states than in blue states? Well, well, well.....now you're getting interesting. Perhaps these are the reasons for the higher fatality rates in red states. But this actually reinforces my point that sociopolitical issues are to blame for such disparities. After all, hospitals and emergency units are infrastructure issues. A deficiency in them would logically affect your survivability in a car crash. Can you tell me again which party and which region of the country has been so opposed to spending on public infrastructure?
Not fewer hospitals, but longer response times and a longer distance to the ER. When you are in a major accident; EVERY MINUTE COUNTS. If it takes the paramedics and an extra 20 minutes to get to you and if it takes them an extra 20 minutes to get to the hospital, you have less chance of surviving the accident. That is the reality in rural areas.
I didn't know teleportation technology existed. I always thought that longer distances means longer travel time (unless you travel faster, which increases the odds of a fatal accident...), but it seems that the Republicans have been blocking the use of equipment that can bend time and space by paramedics and police officers.
It's not an infrastructure issue, it is purely the reality of living and working in less densely populated areas. If you look up statistics for most dangerous jobs, you will find that a disproportionate amount of them are jobs that are mainly worked in remote areas (miners, truck drivers, lumberjacks, farmer laborers, etc.)
Get a grip. You don't know what you are talking about.
Says the guy who is dismissing countless factors which are discussed in basic drivers' ed and claiming highway fatalities all boil down to political stance. Considering you are the only person I have ever heard take this view, how did you become so much more intelligent than the folks in the CDC and every public safety organization? Reasonable people can disagree on countless issues, but I've never heard that voting for Republicans in national issues leads to car accidents. See if you can bring up your hypothesis to a statistician, you may not get his opinion because he will be laughing so hard that he might just pass out.
Would you consider Maine a metropolitan or urbanized state? Why does Maine have a lower fatality rate than the red states? How about Vermont?
Could be a fluke, could be lower DUI rates than most states, could be any number of factors, but I doubt it has little to do with the voting record of the states in question.
Not fewer hospitals, but longer response times and a longer distance to the ER. When you are in a major accident; EVERY MINUTE COUNTS. If it takes the paramedics and an extra 20 minutes to get to you and if it takes them an extra 20 minutes to get to the hospital, you have less chance of surviving the accident. That is the reality in rural areas.
If you have more hospitals lined up along a rural highway, the response time to get to at least one of them should be cut down significantly. So yeah, it is an infrastructure issue.
And if you say that since there are fewer people living in the rural areas, therefore not many hospitals are needed, then it goes back to why we use the fatality per capita as the most accurate way of measuring fatality rates. The fatality per capita adjusts for the population size. So now we're back to population count after all.....it's not about response times, terrains, or driving speeds.....
Quote:
It's not an infrastructure issue, it is purely the reality of living and working in less densely populated areas.
Hmmm....so you're saying it's not about terrain, driving speeds, or response times after all? These are infrastructure issues, aren't they? I thought you said these were the factors that mattered. Now you've contradicted yourself. It's back to population density (which is addressed by the metric fatality rate per capita).
If you have more hospitals lined up along a rural highway, the response time to get to at least one of them should be cut down significantly. So yeah, it is an infrastructure issue.
And if you say that since there are fewer people living in the rural areas, therefore not many hospitals are needed, then it goes back to why we use the fatality per capita as the most accurate way of measuring fatality rates. The fatality per capita adjusts for the population size. So now we're back to population count after all.....it's not about response times, terrains, or driving speeds.....
Hmmm....so you're saying it's not about terrain, driving speeds, or response times after all? These are infrastructure issues, aren't they? I thought you said these were the factors that mattered. Now you've contradicted yourself. It's back to population density (which is addressed by the metric fatality rate per capita).
What a loser.
Population and population density aren't the same thing. A "per capita" measure controls for population, not population density. Population density is the ratio of population to some unit of area or space.
Last edited by ParkTwain; 03-02-2009 at 11:06 AM..
Population and population density aren't the same thing. A "per capita" measure controls for population, not population density.
I know that. But the poster I was responding to was using the term population density interchangeably with population size, which for this discussion, isn't necessarily a big departure from orthodox usage. Rural areas have low population size and low population density, while urban areas have high population size and high density (ie the measures are congruent). But you're right, population size and population density are different measures.
If you have more hospitals lined up along a rural highway, the response time to get to at least one of them should be cut down significantly. So yeah, it is an infrastructure issue.
That's also an economics issue. Do you have any idea how much that would cost? Who would staff all these hospitals? It is not practical or economical.
And if you say that since there are fewer people living in the rural areas, therefore not many hospitals are needed, then it goes back to why we use the fatality per capita as the most accurate way of measuring fatality rates. The fatality per capita adjusts for the population size. So now we're back to population count after all.....it's not about response times, terrains, or driving speeds.....
Fatalities per capita and fatality rates are pretty much the same thing. Plus population size and population density aren't the same thing.
Hmmm....so you're saying it's not about terrain, driving speeds, or response times after all? These are infrastructure issues, aren't they? I thought you said these were the factors that mattered. Now you've contradicted yourself. It's back to population density (which is addressed by the metric fatality rate per capita).
They are all factors. Response times are just a major one. You can't really narrow down something with so many potential causes (speed, response times, distance to hospitals, type of vehicles involved in accidents, road conditions, etc.) which most of those are the result of rural environment and not political stance.
I know that. But the poster I was responding to was using the term population density interchangeably with population size, which for this discussion, isn't necessarily a big departure from orthodox usage. Rural areas have low population size and low population density, while urban areas have high population size and high density (ie the measures are congruent). But you're right, population size and population density are different measures.
I didn't really refer to population size period, other than mentioning that states with large metropolitan areas well tend to skew the statistics towards more accidents per capita, but less fatal accidents per capita.
Usually in these threads meant to polarize you will have people jumping in to put their hark hark comment in. It's only you. You don't even have the dubya did it crowd....
I didn't really refer to population size period, other than mentioning that states with large metropolitan areas well tend to skew the statistics towards more accidents per capita, but less fatal accidents per capita.
That's a hypothesis on your part, having built-in assumptions that you haven't yet stated. For instance, urban areas might be using vehicles in such a manner that the accidents occurring there are inherently more violent and therefore more deadly regardless of the proximity of hospitals. There is no data in the study nor provided by you that addresses such a possibility, but such data is to some extent relevant to the discussion. Your hypothesis may also have built-in assumptions that don't address the number of person-miles traveled by public transportation in urban areas that have such a system. Narrowing down the truly most relevant factors requires more data than that study provides.
I wanna know the GPA while in school for the medics. The driving record of the Ambulance. The eyeglass prescription if they wear glasses...etc...
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