daveb@reed.UUCP (David Billstrom) (04/17/85)
Be cautious about using highway fatality figures vs. time, or fatality vs. max speed. The advances in emergency medicine, particularly trauma systems, have reaped incrediable improvements in morbidity rates. Morbidity is the statistic used by hospitals and emergency medical systems to measure whether a patient lives through surgery and the rest of the hospital stay. I cannot remember the exact statistics, and I don't have the time to look up the statistics I've read in emergency medicine journals, but nationwide, the morbidity rate for vehicle accidents circa 1975 was about 85% (85 percent of critically injured people died within a week or so of the accident). In 1985, some areas of the country claim less than 20% morbidity! Obviously, such wide fluctuation in the fatality figure is going to skew fatality vs max speed and fatality vs number of drivers, etc. Good places to live for such survival include Maryland, Seattle, San Diego, and Portland. Thus, these areas especially will have skewed statistics when defending arguments with fatality rates -- unless of course the argument being defended is in favor of more/better emergency medical systems. Also worth noting is Germany, where the idea of the trauma system was pioneered, modeled after Vietnam and Korea med-evac methods. Covering most of the autobahn is a system of helicopter ambulances and trauma surgery hospitals... the claim is that within 20 minutes of impact in a vehicle accident on the autobahn, you will be in surgery. (In the United States, within areas with special trauma systems, 1 hour is considered very good, and unfortunately unusual) I'm not sure where I stand in the current discussion concerning the true effectiveness of the 55 at saving lives, mandetory seatbelts, etc -- but everyone seems to be manipulating the statistics and explaining/justifying their point of view with the fatality rate. I'm pointing out that the fatality rate has been grossly affected by the advances of emergency medicine (roughly coinciding with the same period of time that the 55 was enacted). I'm not unhappy about the statistics, mind you.