"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , Ed Huntress says...

Something is sure helping the situation. Here are the death rates/100MM
miles, per the US Dept. of Transportation:

1965 5.30
1970 4.85
1975 3.43
1980 3.35
1985 2.47
1990 2.08
1995 1.73
2000 1.53

(Transportation Indicators for Motor Vehicles and Airlines:
http://www.census.gov/statab/www/minihs.html) That's down from over 45 in
1909, BTW. g

Ah, statistics. Then you of *all* posters here should know that
there's a multitude of reasons for those numbers. Not all of
the reasons are related to helmets, airbags, and seatbelts.

Some of the reasons have to do with things that make cars work
better and faster.

I hear you, Jim, but the things that made cars "work better and faster," in
the early '60s, actually drove death rates *up*, particularly between 1960
and 1965. That's why Congress started grumbling about the horsepower race,
and, when the big-block engines came in, the manufacturers started
*underrating* their horsepower. A Golden Commando 426 hemi was "rated" at, I
think 425 hp, which was a joke. They typically dyno'd at 475+ NET hp.

Over that span of years we saw some improvements in highway safety, and some
modest increases in testing and requirements for drivers, but the big change
was mandated safety improvements in cars: seat belts, then shoulder straps,
mandates to wear them, air bags, structural improvements for controlled
crush, side-impact structure...a lot of little things. Any unimpassioned and
reasonable evaluation would first recognize the parallels between those
mandated safety improvements and the decline in highway deaths per mile.

And then you might go looking for other things. What might those be, Jim?
And what's your basis for judging that those, if there are any significant
ones, are the important factors? We have mountains of testing and data to
show how survivability has improved with the mandated safety requirements.
What do you have to demonstrate that it's something else?

--
Ed Huntress