# how are the drivers in your area/

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-the-drivers-in-your-area/360178>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [June 10, 2006, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-the-drivers-in-your-area/360178 "2006-06-10T06:52:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2006, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-the-drivers-in-your-area/360178/21 "2006-06-12T16:47:49Z")

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[QUOTE=pullin]  
Then why have death rates in automobiles continued to fall, even after the introduction of the cell phone?  
[/QUOTE]

Survivability of accidents is a different concept than number of accidents. There are a number of technological advances that have teamed up to make what would have been a horrible fatality twenty years ago into something you could walk away from - crumple zones, anti-lock brakes, side-impact protection, multiple air bags, etc.

What we’re after here is the number of accidents - everything from bumping someone in stop-and-crawl traffic at the tollbooth up to careening off the side of the road at 80 MPH and breaking the car in half after smashing into a tree.

Around here, there are a lot of bumps and fender benders during rush hour, or what the traffic reporters call “trading paint” - I’m sure that most of them are due to plain old inattention - playing with the radio, yakking on the phone, pecking away on the Crackberry, etc.

Just yesterday, I saw a fairly short set of skid marks where someone didn’t curve when the road did - they just went straight along and plowed into the concrete “Jersey barrier” lining the median. I can’t think of a reason to do that other than not paying attention to driving - it’s not a blind curve or even close to being a surprise on flat, open road. Two of the roughly 4000-pound concrete barriers were destroyed and shoved back a few feet. As they say, “That’ll leave a mark!”

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