Drunk Walking
David V. Loewe, Jr
"Jan. 1 is a deadly day for pedestrians in the United States,
consistently averaging the highest number of walkers killed in motor
vehicle crashes and a greater proportion of victims who are legally
intoxicated."
And it isn't just cars that are killing them, either.
"�The drunk walkers turn everyday objects into deadly weapons,� said Dr.
Ryan A. Stanton, a Lexington, Ky., emergency room physician who has
treated several badly injured pedestrians on past New Year�s Days.
�They trip over a crack in the sidewalk, they hit their heads on curbs
and light poles,� said Stanton, who is ER medical director at the
University of Kentucky Good Samaritan Hospital."
The impaired judgment of drunk walkers leads to fatal encounters with
cars - especially by jaywalkers.
"That lack of judgment may be why pedestrians are most often at fault
when they're involved in deadly crashes, according to a 2002 study of
deaths in Baltimore, Md., and Washington, D.C. They were almost always
responsible for crashes in which a walker darts out in front of a car in
the middle of a street or tries to dash across an intersection, the IIHS
reported."
All of which leads to the fact that drunk walking is more deadly than
drunk driving.
"Drunk walking may actually be deadlier than drunk driving throughout
the year, not just on New Year�s Day, at least according to a contrarian
analysis by numbers gurus Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner in
their recent book, �SuperFreakonomics.�
By their math, on a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more
likely to get killed than a drunk driver, and walking drunk leads to
five times as many deaths per mile as driving drunk."
Friends don't let friends walk drunk.
--
"Just think of it as evolution in action."
Tony Rand in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's
'Oath of Fealty'