Poll: Auto Accident Fatalities and Injuries

[Josh]

Auto fatalities in America largely follow class. I can’t think of anyone I knew who got killed in a car accident before 2020. (Auto fatalities are most often single vehicle accidents.) Upper class people (or those who end up associating with them) simply avoid accidents and for some reason don’t get hit as pedestrians either.

Plain people, on the other hand, seem to think auto fatalities are just a fact of life, like having to sneeze. Many of them consider seatbelts a joke. They drive at unsafe speeds, often in violation of the law. Young people drive recklessly. Car crashed? Mutual aid will pay to replace it. Parents buy their 16 year olds expensive, fast cars and then buy them another one after they crash it. Fellow church members rush to the scene of a single vehicle accident before police get there “so you won’t get a ticket”.

There are always excuses for all these accidents: “black ice”, “the car went out of control”, “the roads around here are so bad”. WhatsApp last seens and statuses reveal most the young people in my contact list use their smartphone when driving.

Young people hop on ATVs or dirt bikes for “farm use”, effectively using them as vehicles. Amish hop on e-bikes, flying down the road at 40 MPH with no driver licence, registration, insurance, driver education, and children as young as 6 or 7 will drive them. They feel exempt from laws requiring you to single before turning, and also feel at liberty to drive double file alongside cars.

Young men fiddle with their exhaust and emissions system so they can spew clouds of black smoke, make loud noise, and go even faster; install illegal tint on windows, with the excuse being “privacy” or “so people can’t see in”. What is being done in one’s car that needs so much privacy?

Truckers regularly drive overweight and hope not to get caught. Frustrations with modern DEF systems are fixed with an illegal chip. (We did recently have a sermon on how it’s wrong to do this.) Logbooks were faked to avoid mandatory rest periods. Commercial loads are hauled as “agricultural”, evading proper registration plates and required CDLs for drivers. Then another prayer request and GoFundMe appears for yet another trucker who “fell asleep at the wheel”. Our heartstrings are pulled with pictures of a young family.

Overall, I feel the witness of plain people on motorised vehicles is a very bad one. But don’t take my word for it - ask your neighbours what they think. What is so important that we can break traffic laws, drive unsafely, and regularly have deaths? Is this really how God’s people would live?

[Soloist]

4. Why were auto fatalities higher in 2020 and 2021 as compared with 2022 and 2023?

Wife: Here is a hypothesis, and I am completely ready to be wrong, but could that actually have to do with Covid/hospital shortages? I also seem to remember hearing about increased drinking during that time.
As for the increase over time, our roads are getting more crowded, our phones are getting more alluring, and the majority of people I see nowadays are distracted drivers.

[ken_sylvania]

Might this have something to do with it:

In Italy one year, we wanted to rent a car....our tour guide cautioned us, "here we have rules...you are not in America....and if you commit a driving infraction, they WILL take you to jail. Our laws are NOT suggestions."

[Ken]

Auto fatalities in America largely follow class. I can’t think of anyone I knew who got killed in a car accident before 2020. (Auto fatalities are most often single vehicle accidents.) Upper class people (or those who end up associating with them) simply avoid accidents and for some reason don’t get hit as pedestrians either.

Plain people, on the other hand, seem to think auto fatalities are just a fact of life, like having to sneeze. Many of them consider seatbelts a joke. They drive at unsafe speeds, often in violation of the law. Young people drive recklessly. Car crashed? Mutual aid will pay to replace it. Parents buy their 16 year olds expensive, fast cars and then buy them another one after they crash it. Fellow church members rush to the scene of a single vehicle accident before police get there “so you won’t get a ticket”.

It's not so much class as it is rural versus urban. Unless you consider rural and urban to be "classes" of people. Highway fatality rates are substantially higher in rural areas, especially at night. And things like rates of drunk driving are also higher in rural areas than urban. Also rural highways are more unsafe with narrower shoulders less markings, less light, and induce higher speeds compared to urban and suburban streets and highways. There are a lot of studies that back this up.

So what you are describing with respect to plain people is probably more of a rural attitude than a class attitude.

[Josh]

Auto fatalities in America largely follow class. I can’t think of anyone I knew who got killed in a car accident before 2020. (Auto fatalities are most often single vehicle accidents.) Upper class people (or those who end up associating with them) simply avoid accidents and for some reason don’t get hit as pedestrians either.

Plain people, on the other hand, seem to think auto fatalities are just a fact of life, like having to sneeze. Many of them consider seatbelts a joke. They drive at unsafe speeds, often in violation of the law. Young people drive recklessly. Car crashed? Mutual aid will pay to replace it. Parents buy their 16 year olds expensive, fast cars and then buy them another one after they crash it. Fellow church members rush to the scene of a single vehicle accident before police get there “so you won’t get a ticket”.

It's not so much class as it is rural versus urban. Unless you consider rural and urban to be "classes" of people. Highway fatality rates are substantially higher in rural areas, especially at night. And things like rates of drunk driving are also higher in rural areas than urban. Also rural highways are more unsafe with narrower shoulders less markings, less light, and induce higher speeds compared to urban and suburban streets and highways. There are a lot of studies that back this up.

So what you are describing with respect to plain people is probably more of a rural attitude than a class attitude.

Believe it or not, Ken, there are certain demographic subgroups in “urban” settings that have shockingly high accident fatality rates.

[Ken]

Auto fatalities in America largely follow class. I can’t think of anyone I knew who got killed in a car accident before 2020. (Auto fatalities are most often single vehicle accidents.) Upper class people (or those who end up associating with them) simply avoid accidents and for some reason don’t get hit as pedestrians either.

Plain people, on the other hand, seem to think auto fatalities are just a fact of life, like having to sneeze. Many of them consider seatbelts a joke. They drive at unsafe speeds, often in violation of the law. Young people drive recklessly. Car crashed? Mutual aid will pay to replace it. Parents buy their 16 year olds expensive, fast cars and then buy them another one after they crash it. Fellow church members rush to the scene of a single vehicle accident before police get there “so you won’t get a ticket”.

It's not so much class as it is rural versus urban. Unless you consider rural and urban to be "classes" of people. Highway fatality rates are substantially higher in rural areas, especially at night. And things like rates of drunk driving are also higher in rural areas than urban. Also rural highways are more unsafe with narrower shoulders less markings, less light, and induce higher speeds compared to urban and suburban streets and highways. There are a lot of studies that back this up.

So what you are describing with respect to plain people is probably more of a rural attitude than a class attitude.

Believe it or not, Ken, there are certain demographic subgroups in “urban” settings that have shockingly high accident fatality rates.

Yes, young people. Especially young males. That is why they pay the highest insurance rates.

But none of that changes the fact that highway fatality rates are substantially higher in rural areas for a whole lot of reasons.

[NedFlanders]

Auto fatalities in America largely follow class. I can’t think of anyone I knew who got killed in a car accident before 2020. (Auto fatalities are most often single vehicle accidents.) Upper class people (or those who end up associating with them) simply avoid accidents and for some reason don’t get hit as pedestrians either.

Plain people, on the other hand, seem to think auto fatalities are just a fact of life, like having to sneeze. Many of them consider seatbelts a joke. They drive at unsafe speeds, often in violation of the law. Young people drive recklessly. Car crashed? Mutual aid will pay to replace it. Parents buy their 16 year olds expensive, fast cars and then buy them another one after they crash it. Fellow church members rush to the scene of a single vehicle accident before police get there “so you won’t get a ticket”.

There are always excuses for all these accidents: “black ice”, “the car went out of control”, “the roads around here are so bad”. WhatsApp last seens and statuses reveal most the young people in my contact list use their smartphone when driving.

Young people hop on ATVs or dirt bikes for “farm use”, effectively using them as vehicles. Amish hop on e-bikes, flying down the road at 40 MPH with no driver licence, registration, insurance, driver education, and children as young as 6 or 7 will drive them. They feel exempt from laws requiring you to single before turning, and also feel at liberty to drive double file alongside cars.

Young men fiddle with their exhaust and emissions system so they can spew clouds of black smoke, make loud noise, and go even faster; install illegal tint on windows, with the excuse being “privacy” or “so people can’t see in”. What is being done in one’s car that needs so much privacy?

Truckers regularly drive overweight and hope not to get caught. Frustrations with modern DEF systems are fixed with an illegal chip. (We did recently have a sermon on how it’s wrong to do this.) Logbooks were faked to avoid mandatory rest periods. Commercial loads are hauled as “agricultural”, evading proper registration plates and required CDLs for drivers. Then another prayer request and GoFundMe appears for yet another trucker who “fell asleep at the wheel”. Our heartstrings are pulled with pictures of a young family.

Overall, I feel the witness of plain people on motorised vehicles is a very bad one. But don’t take my word for it - ask your neighbours what they think. What is so important that we can break traffic laws, drive unsafely, and regularly have deaths? Is this really how God’s people would live?

This is sad but true… It’s really something to participate in all these things and then turn one’s back on it forsaking the world to follow Christ - only to find the world in the church… It isn’t fun telling my teenage son that the example of the church with driving is one a Christlike person is not to follow…

[Josh]

Yes, young people. Especially young males. That is why they pay the highest insurance rates.

This hasn’t been the case in decades (males having higher rates).

But none of that changes the fact that highway fatality rates are substantially higher in rural areas for a whole lot of reasons.

At the risk of repeating myself, once broken down by class (which insurers do using things like zip code and credit score), some demographics in urban areas are worse than the rural areas you like to pick on, particularly in terms of per vehicle miles travelled. If I moved from a rural area to any of the nearby cities, my insurance would go up substantially. I can easily check it with an online quoting tool.

[Ken]

Yes, young people. Especially young males. That is why they pay the highest insurance rates.

This hasn’t been the case in decades (males having higher rates).

You do realize these things are easily checked. I specified YOUNG males, not all males. This is what the insurance industry currently says in an article dated Jun 21, 2023: https://www.insurance.com/auto-insuranc ... women.aspx

Do males or females pay more for auto insurance?

Female drivers often pay less than men, but there are exceptions.

Rates fluctuate based on age, as well as the insurance company. Female drivers from age 16 to 24 pay, on average, between $500 and $800 a year less for car insurance compared to their male counterparts, according to Insurance.com's rate analysis.

That rate data shows around age 30, males and females even out, with males even paying a few dollars less at age 40, on average. After age 50, females start again to pay less, but less than $50 annually.

Why do teens pay the most for auto insurance?

Teen drivers are the riskiest age group to insure. They're inexperienced and cause more crashes.

According to insurance.com research, 16-year-old males pay on average $843 more than their female counterparts. The good news is that as these young male drivers age and get more experience, their costs and the differentiation between females of the same age drop.

At 20, they pay on average $454 more than females; at 25, the difference drops to $107.

[Josh]

Which is offtopic. As I said earlier, urban insurance rates are higher than rural ones.