THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512080096
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
NOW THAT ANN Landers is on the hot seat, lashing herself with that disgusting wet noodle for her Polish slur of the pope, I thought I would turn up the temperature on the national advice columnist.
Sometimes Landers, a k a Eppie Lederer of Sioux City, Iowa, can be a real noodlehead.
I'm speaking of the running campaign of dis-information that she's kept up with senior citizens, especially seniors in Boise, Idaho, over their driving skills. Apparently intent on getting seniors off the road, but suffering from statistical dyslexia, Ann, now 77, compares teenage drivers with drivers over 65 (or 70 or 75) by their accident fatality rates and concludes that teenagers present less of a highway risk!
Ann must not get out of Chicago much.
Just last week, in the wake of the ``Polack'' gaffe, Landers was challenged by a smart 70-year-old man from the potato state to look up the number of accidents that teenagers have vis-a-vis ``drivers who are collecting Social Security.'' She curtly responded: ``As I've said before, although teenagers may be responsible for a lot of traffic accidents, seniors are more likely to be involved in fatalities.''
And how does the columnist derive this fatality rate that presumably (but not logically) marks seniors as more hazardous? (Who's killing whom? I'd like to know.) Not long ago she told another senior Idahoan: ``. . . the rate of fatal accidents per miles driven is higher for drivers over 75 than for teenagers.''
If Ann were a high-school statistics student, she'd flunk. I mean, geez, Ann, teenagers likely drive more miles than over-75 seniors do. If ``fatality rate'' is derived from ``miles driven,'' the figure is bound to be higher for less-mobile seniors.
Suppose over-75 drivers in anytown, U.S.A., in a given year, drove 10,000 miles and 10 were killed in accidents; the fatality rate would be 1 per 1,000 miles. Now suppose that teenagers comparatively drove 1 million miles and 100 were killed; the fatality rate would be only 1 in 10,000. Yet 10 times as many teenagers as seniors would have died!
I took the suggestion of Ann's letter writer, ``Snow on the Roof But Going Strong in Boise,'' and called the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to learn how teenagers and seniors compare in total accidents. An NHTSA spokeswoman sent me the only ``factsheets'' that she had - on 1994 fatality rates.
What I discovered may have Ann whipping out that wet noodle again.
According to the NHTSA, 54,514 traffic fatalities occurred in 1994 that ``involved'' drivers. Of those, 7,957 (14.6 percent) were drivers 15 to 20 (so-called ``young''); and 4,429 (8.1 percent) were 70-or-over (``older'') drivers.
There were 23,694 driver fatalities, with young drivers accounting for 3,448 (14.5 percent) of them, and older drivers, 2,911 (12.3 percent). Older drivers outnumber the young ones by 4 million (15.7 to 11.7 million), but overall, 67.8 in 100,000 young licensed drivers were involved in fatal crashes, compared to 28.2 in 100,000 for the 70-plus group.
It looks like Mr. Idaho has a lot more than snow on his roof. The safety risk of young-fast-and-foolish still (I remember being 17) beats out older-slower-and-wiser any day. A check of Virginia ``crash facts'' for 1994, compiled by the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, also confirms this.
Of the 232,601 drivers involved in 126,637 motor-vehicle crashes last year on Virginia's roadways, 16 percent were between ages 15 and 20; only 3.8 percent were 70 or over (2.3 percent were between 66-70). Of the 1,228 drivers involved in fatal crashes, 13.3 percent were 15-to-20; 6.4 percent were 70-plus.
Driver risk tends to peak at 25, and then drop off until age 70, when it rises slightly. The prime accident culprit is, and has always been, a male, age 15 to 25. (Incidentally, men have three times as many accidents as ``lady drivers.'')
Here's another curious tidbit I uncovered in the NHSTA factsheet: ``In two-vehicle fatal crashes involving an older driver and a younger driver, the vehicle driven by the older person was 3.6 times as likely to be the one that was struck (58 percent and 16 percent, respectively). In 44 percent of these crashes, both vehicles were proceeding straight at the time of the collision.''
But in 28 percent of these crashes, the older driver was turning left - and thus was either proceeding unsafely or was clipped from behind by a careless, young driver.
No question, a lot of inexperienced kids, who have a false sense of omnipotence and an attaction to thrill-seeking, drive recklessly. Sometimes they're drunk - the NHTSA has the numbers.
Some senior citizens, however, have seriously diminished reflexes, are easily distracted and drive so slowly as to impede the safe flow of traffic. Those who pose a hazard should be weeded out in annual driving examinations.
Agressive, or careless, drivers of any age can be dangerous. Don't be like Ann: Use your noodle before it's all wet. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is a lawyer and book editor for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB