Traffic fatalities in the U.S. have plummeted over the past few years. Traffic regulations, such as strict drunken driving laws and auto innovation, are receiving the credit. But that progress obscures the inequality of who dies in a car crash and who survives.
New research by Sam Harper, Thomas J. Charters and Erin C. Strumpf, published in the "American Journal of Epidemiology" reveals that the most disadvantaged are more likely to die in car crashes than people who are well-off.
The study, titled Trends in Socioeconomic Inequalities in Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths in the United States, 1995-2010, finds that improvements in road safety since the 1990's haven't been evenly shared. There has been a huge decline in fatalities among the most educated. But fatality rates have increased over time for people 25 and older with less than a high school diploma.
The underlying issue is not that a college degree makes you a better driver, but that the least-educated tend to live with conditions that can make moving around more dangerous. They often own cars that are older and have lower crash-test ratings; they are also likely to earn less, putting them at a disadvantage of not owning vehicles with fancy safety features, such as side airbags, automatic warnings and rear cameras.
(Photo: AP/Richard Drew)
Poor road conditions, less seat-belt use
The research also revealed that the number of trauma centers in poor and rural communities has also declined, leading to inadequate health care for people involved in collisions. In addition, bad road conditions in disadvantaged communities contribute to the road safety issues faced by residents in those areas. In many cities, poor communities lack crosswalks or major roads. Residents in those communities often have less political power to fight for design improvements, such as stop signs, sidewalks and speed bumps. As a result, pedestrian fatalities, in particular, are higher in poor communities.
"It's true that there are big differences in the quality of the residential environments that people have in terms of their risks of accidental death as pedestrians," Harper says.
Some studies also show that the less-educated are more likely to not use their seat belts, although seat-belt use has also increased faster among that group over time, which means that socioeconomic differences there are narrowing.
This chart, based on National Center for Health Statistics data used by the researchers, captures miles traveled by car, bus and other motor vehicles. Fatalities also include deaths of pedestrians and cyclists struck in car crashes.
In 1995, these death rates—adjusted for age, sex and race—were about 2.5 times higher for people at the bottom of the education spectrum than those at the top. They were about 4.3 times higher by 2010, signifying that the inequality of traffic fatalities is getting worse, even as it looks as if our roads are getting safer.
As people have increased hopes for new and sophisticated technologies that will save drivers from their own driving errors—cars that brake automatically, spot unrecognizable cyclists, or control the entire navigation process—it should be anticipated that those benefits may first go to the wealthy.
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