Peter Wieck wrote:
> Accordingly, Americans who do not live in the very few cities where
> personal cars are truly a luxury (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia
> (barely), Wa****ngton DC and a handful of others) drive A LOT.
> Typically, I drive ~24,000 miles a year (38,400km), of which 2/3 is
> business. My wife drives about 10,000 (16,000km) miles per year, very
> little on business. And by US standards we are very conservative in
> our habits.
>
> So, if accidents are a function of being in harm's way, and measured
> in per-mile-driven rather than per-capita, I would posit that the US
> accident rate is rather low by comparison. Right now, per NHTSA (as of
> 2002) fatalities + re****table injuries are running under 2/100,000
> (160,000km) miles driven and trending down. Similarly in England, but
> their rate (also 2002) is just over 2, close-but-below France and so
> forth. Most of the rest of the world is several orders-of-magnitude
> higher.
>
> Figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure.
So, if you're typical, your mileage is around 1.5 times the UK average.
Yet, UK road deaths per head of population are around one THIRD the US
rate.
How do you account for this apparent mismatch. Does the **average** US
driver cover
35,000 mi annually ?
Graham
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