NMA Email Newsletter: Issue #48


Impress Friends & Family

This year, when you’re enjoying holiday get-togethers and someone blurts out “they’re all crazy out there, no one knows how to drive anymore, you’re taking your life in your hands just getting behind the wheel!” You can pleasantly respond, “heck I’ve never felt safer than I do now, when driving my car.” Then, as the withering looks are about to erupt in a verbal tirade and your sanity is going to be questioned you can follow-up with these authoritative statistics:

“Did you know that the fatality rate in 2008, 1.27 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled, was two thirds lower than it was during the heydays of the 55 MPH national speed limit. That means that three people were killed in car crashes then, versus one person now, for the same miles of travel. We had the lowest number of traffic fatalities in 2008 in almost 50 years and yet we have twice the population and even a greater proportion of drivers than we had back then.”

“The bottom line is we are more than three times safer on our highways today than we were in the “good ‘ole’ days.” (The good old days being the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s when the slogan was “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.” Little did we know that would become a literal truism, at least from a shareholder perspective!)

When you’re asked where you came up with this nonsense you can tell them the data is published annually by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

If you’re pressed hard and your credibility is being questioned you can toss out these numbers for 2008:

Drivers and auto passengers killed in traffic accidents: 26,869
Motorcyclists killed in traffic accidents: 5290
Non-motor vehicle fatalities (primarily pedestrians and bicyclists): 5282

Notice, no round numbers, that’ll make you sound authoritative!

On a unrelated, but interesting note:
Check out the new design on the Speed Trap Exchange website.

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