Perhaps 6-8 years ago, the US DOT and NHTSA published a statistic online that identified a thoroughly horrifying situation. Put simply, it said that the chances for every young person in the USA being involved in a serious-injury or fatal road crash at some point in their life is an astonishingly-high “fifty-fifty.” At that time, I looked at my four American step-daughters and wondered which two — statistically speaking — it might be. That statistic, however, very swiftly disappeared off the Internet.
Now, however, I also have six American grandchildren, and just today — August 11, 2017 — another statistic has been published on Facebook by NHTSA which very effectively renews my concerns. It said exactly this:
NHTSA The chance of being in an alcohol-impaired crash is one in three over the course of a lifetime. #BuzzedDriving
.
If the chances “of being in an alcohol-impaired crash [are] one in three over the course of a lifetime,” then clearly that original 50:50 scenario for involvement in any type of serious-injury or fatal crash still holds true for every younger person in America!
.
Sadly, what this creates — like it or not — is an admission of just how bad, relatively speaking, the road safety situation is in the USA, compared to other developed nations, the best of which have rates of road deaths less than one-quarter of the rates in America.
.
Did you know that in the last 25 years alone, over a million Americans have been killed in road crashes? The people of the US need to understand the scale of the problem and raise hell with their relevant politicians.
