The NHTSA and Government Fraud

Women drive only 30% of miles driven but are in 37% of the fatal accidents

Even though police reports filed by thousands of police departments across the country show that only 4% of all accidents are "alcohol involved", the NHTSA uses a "statistical model" which embellishes this data to enable them to report that 10% of all accidents are "alcohol involved".  When pedestrians, passengers, bicyclists, other non-drivers; and drivers who were listed as "alcohol involved" but who had a bac = 0, who weren't administered the test, who were administered the test but the results were nonconclusive, and who had a bac < .10, are removed, drivers with a bac > .10 are only 3% of those involved in fatal accidents according to the NHTSA, and only 1.25% according to the police reports.   It is this fatal discrepancy between valid police reports and data manipulation by a known advocacy group like the NHTSA which is responsible for the mass hysteria surrounding drinking and driving, which ultimately leads errant writers, reporters, editors, and headline writers to proclaim from the rooftops that:

"HALF OF ALL TRAFFIC DEATHS ARE CAUSED BY DRINKING ALCOHOL".

The reality is that women drivers are 70% more likely per mile to have an accident than men drivers, which makes them far more dangerous than men who drink and drive.

A German study used the most conservative approach possible to analyzing the real effects of drinking and driving and showed that, overall, drinking and driving increased the likelihood of an accident by at most 32%.  Even using its liberal assumptions, it pointed out that drivers with a bac = .04 were 30% less likely than drivers with a bac = 0 [read: nondrinking drivers] to have an accident.  But where this study reported that 5.5% of all German drivers have a bac > 0 [read: drinking drivers] at any one time,  it omitted another 5.2% of the drivers who refused to take the test who may have and most likely had been drinking. If only 5.2% of German drivers drink and drive, but 7.2% of the drivers in accidents were those drivers who drink and drive, then drinking drivers are 32.3% more likely than nondrinking drivers to have an accident.   If drinking drivers constitute 10.7% of all drivers, then they are 35.7% less likely than nondrinking drivers to have an accident.  Needless to say, getting an accurate figure regarding the percentage of drivers who drink and drive in the first   place is fundamental to understanding where the problem lays:  a drinking driver, or a woman driver.  Without even considering the possibility that drinking drivers are safer drivers per mile than nondrinking drivers, the NHTSA data as it stands shows that women drivers who don't drink and drive are fourteen times (14X) more  likely to have a fatal accident than men who do drink and drive.  Once the actual alcohol consumption in the US is taken into account, it's inevitible.

There are many ill effects of this campaign by MADD:

	We have more Americans in prisons and jails *just* for drinking and driving than Japan has for all crimes combined.
	It costs a minimum of $20 billion per year to operate.
	It undermined the basic freedom of many Americans to simply travel, a violation of the US Constitution.
	The reduction in alcohol consumption already caused by these DUI laws is directly responsible for an additional 35,000 heart disease deaths/year.
	Advocacy groups like this claim to have saved 11,614 more lives than the number of lives saved by the actual reduction in the motor vehicle fatality rate.
	We know that outlawing women drivers would save more than 9,000 lives per year, which is 11 times more than the absolute maximum of 820 lives which would be saved if this program were a 100% success and drinking and driving were completely eliminated.

Outlawing women drivers would cost one fiftieth as much per life saved than it would cost to continue this failed DUI campaign, and it would save 43,430 more lives per year.  There would be 9,250 fewer traffic fatalities and 35,000 fewer heart disease fatalities.  Where the most optimistic assessment of the cost per life saved of the DUI campaign is $24 million, the maximum cost per life saved by outlawing women drivers is $.45 million, including a possible reduction in their labor force participation rate.

Copyright @ 2010 by Fathers' Manifesto & Christian Party