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WORLD> America
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High gas prices drive down traffic fatalities in US
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-25 17:00 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. "It's really very interesting that with all these efforts that have gone into building safer highways, safer cars, better enforcement ... this really dramatic change we're seeing is due to economics, to the price of gasoline," said Paul Fischbeck, director of Center for the Study and Improvement of Regulation at Carnegie Mellon University. The impact of high gas prices appears to extend well beyond traffic fatalities, also reshaping the way in which Americans travel and where they choose to live. Public transit, from trains to buses, is enjoying a revival. Amtrak, the passenger rail service that once struggled to attract riders, is now so popular it may soon not have enough trains to meet demand. The increased cost of commuting to work by car is making close-in urban neighborhoods more attractive, accelerating a shift away from suburbs on the fringes of metropolitan areas, neighborhoods that have already been battered by the mortgage credit crisis. "This is really the first time since the 1970s that people are thinking about driving and about what is the cost of an individual trip," said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia. Christopher B. Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on metropolitan development trends, predicts that in many metropolitan areas fringe suburbs will become tomorrow's slums, while walkable neighborhoods close to employment and city amenities become more desirable because of a variety of demographic changes that have been under way for several years. High gasoline prices that drive up the cost of commuting by car "will just accelerate that," Leinberger said. |
