Monday, August 25, 2008

High gas prices drive down traffic fatalities

In today's Yahoo! News an interesting article was found linking the rise in gas prices to a decrease in traffic fatalities. The article can be found here.

Read this quote:
Experts who have studied motor vehicle fatality trends said one reason for the dramatic decline is that people are reducing their nonessential driving first, which is often leisure driving at night or on weekends. That also happens to be riskier than daylight commuting on congested highways at lower speeds.

Teenage and elderly drivers — who also have higher accident rates — are more likely to feel the pinch of higher gas prices, and thus may be cutting back more than other drivers. Federal data also shows that driving declines have been more dramatic on rural roads, which have higher accident rates than urban highways.

And, some drivers are simply trying to save on gas by slowing down, which also decreases risk.

How about Greece? Did the rise in the price of gasoline have any such effect? Could this be a topic for an extended essay?


The above is due to a post in the Greg Mankiw blog:
Greg Mankiw's Blog: A Reading for the Pigou Club

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