I’ve got a pet peeve against hyperbolic overstatements by tough-on-crime mavens who think, because the targets of their false statements are unpopular, no one will call them on putting out bad information. So I took umbrage in the comments to a post over at Sentencing Law & Policy when a commenter announced that, ” drunk drivers kill enough people to fill a mid sized CITY 45,000-55,000 PEOPLE A YEAR.” I replied that:
your numbers are way off – according to NHTSA, there were 11,773 alcohol related traffic fatalities in 2008 – 8,027 of those were the drunk drivers themselves. (And of course, NHTSA reminds us that “The term ‘alcohol-impaired’ does not indicate that a crash or a fatality was caused by alcohol impairment.”) The total number of US auto accident deaths of all types in 2008 was 37,261. You might be remembering some “all accidents” stat from decades ago, but the data you put forth aren’t remotely accurate, even if putting them in all caps MAKES THEM SEEM REALLY ALARMING.
To me, the 8,027 are Darwin Award winners. They took a risk and paid with their lives. The other 3,746 represent how many people were killed by drunk drivers nationwide. It’s still a significant number, but not the biggest problem society faces: By comparison, for example, largely preventable hospital infections account for 99,000 deaths each year nationwide.
Predictably playing the “what about the children?” card, the original commenter responded:
11,773 individuals any guess what percentage of thoat were children? that is still 1000% if not more children killed by drunks than sex offenders. Therefore if the excuse that sex offenders are so so SO dangerous we need to track eveyr move they make 24/7 THE REST OF THEIR LIVES….where are the same 1 strike your OUT laws for DUI! Where are the registry’s for drunks also the residence and working restrictions? of course theirs should be reversed They should be required to live no FARTEHR than 1,000 from a bar or liquor store so they have no reaosn to get into a car and kill people!
I replied that:
On the number of children, from the same NHTSA report I linked to earlier, “In 2008, a total of 1,347 children age 14 and younger were killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes. Of those 1,347 fatalities, 216 (16%) occurred in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes.” Another 34 kids were pedestrians hit by drunks.
I agree 250 kids nationwide is a significant number, but is it really “1000% more” than the number killed by sex offenders? That would mean sex offenders kill 25 kids or less per year. Maybe that’s accurate, I don’t know the data. I only pointed out that you’re dramatically overstating the problem when you falsely bloviate that “drunk drivers kill enough people to fill a mid sized CITY 45,000-55,000 PEOPLE A YEAR.”
One more bit of context: By comparison to the 250 kids killed in 2008 by drunk drivers, according to the CDC 756 children aged 1-14 were murdered in 2006, the last year for which they have records. (Go here for data.) Not all of those, of course, were sexual assaults, but I find zero support for your contention that drunk driving is killing 1000% more kids than predators assaulting them. Strictly by the numbers, the latter is a more common problem.
I’m not sure I’d have guessed before looking up the hard data that drunk drivers accounted for one-third the number of child deaths compared to homicide. Congenital anomalies and cancer, by contrast, are the big kid killers, accounting for thousands of child deaths. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
