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Old Posted Jan 7, 2013, 11:48 PM
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Are Some Cities Built to Encourage Drunk Driving?

Are Some Cities Built to Encourage Drunk Driving?


January 7th, 2013

By Henry Grabar



Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/com...-driving/4325/

Quote:
.....

The bulk of the data, though, involves the 25 largest U.S. cities, sorted in a chart by four different metrics:

• The 25 Most Populous Cities in the United States

• Fatal Traffic Crashes per 1,000 People

• Fatal Traffic Crashes Involving Intoxication per 1,000 People

• Rate of Fatal Crashes Involving Intoxication

.....

1. Relatively safe cities for driving

New York City and Philadelphia are the biggest ones in this category, but there are a number of smaller municipalities that also qualify – Baltimore, Washington D.C., Boston, and San Francisco. They have a low number of fatal car accidents per capita, a low number of fatal accidents per capita involving intoxication, and the percentage of fatal accidents that involve alcohol is also low.

2. Across-the-board dangerous cities for driving

The roads of Houston, Phoenix, Dallas, and Jacksonville all seem like great places to avoid. Statistically, these are some of the least safe large cities for driving in the United States. Between 2001 and 2010, each of them had a rate of fatal car accidents higher than one per thousand residents. They also had very high rates of fatalities involving intoxication.

3. Cities whose roads are generally safe, but with high rates of drunk driving

The fourth column indicates the percentage of fatal crashes that involved intoxication, also understood as the ratio of columns two and three. Here lie some of the chart's most interesting findings. Many cities, from the safe-driving (NYC, Boston) to the not-so-safe-driving (Phoenix, Houston) have similar positions in all three lists. But not all. Some cities with fewer fatalities per capita move sharply up the table in column four. Consider Seattle, Chicago, San Jose and San Diego. They are all in the bottom ten for fatalities per capita. A large percentage of those fatalities, though, involve alcohol, putting them in the top ten for rates of fatal accidents where intoxication was involved.

4. Memphis

Memphis is a bizarre outlier here, 3rd in fatal crashes per capita, but 18th in fatal crashes involving intoxication per capita. Measured by percentage of fatal crashes involving intoxication, Memphis is last, with a lower rate -- 14 percent -- than even New York City! This is so curious I'm working on a follow-up post on why Memphis is such an outlier.

5. Do Southerners drive drunk less?

Nelson also calculated which U.S. cities have the highest and lowest percentages of fatal crashes involving intoxication, regardless of size. Even with no population restrictions, New York and Memphis are on that list, joined by Birmingham and Salt Lake City. Five of the ten are in the South. Remember -- this is not necessarily an endorsement of these cities as places to drive. Memphis has more fatalities per capita than all but two of the largest U.S. cities.

.....

- But now is a good time to point out a caveat: these per capita statistics weigh accidents within city lines against city population, as an approximate indicator of how many people are driving. This makes some cities look deceptively small, though as anchors of metro areas they contain a much larger number of drivers, many of whom commute in and out of the city. Since the population of many cities -- L.A., Houston, Phoenix, San Diego, etc. -- hovers at around one-third that of their metro area, the effect is pretty evenly distributed.

Here's the top ten:

1. Birmingham, Alabama (13.6 percent)
2. Coral Springs, Florida (13.7 percent)
3. Memphis, Tennessee (14.7 percent)
4. Miramar, Florida (14.8 percent)
5. Provo, Utah (15.4 percent)
6. New York, New York (16.3 percent)
7. Surprise, Arizona (16.7 percent)
8. Hialeah, Florida (16.7 percent)
9. Salt Lake City, Utah (17.7 percent)
10. Miami Gardens, Florida (18.3 percent)

And the highest, in which fatal crashes involve intoxication more often than not. Three are in Colorado; two in Wisconsin. None are in the South:

1. Stamford, Connecticut (55.8 percent)
2. Flint, Michigan (55.6 percent)
3. Bellevue, Washington (54.6 percent)
4. Santa Maria, California (54.2 percent)
5. Denver, Colorado (54.2 percent)
6. Colorado Springs, Colorado (54.1 percent)
7. Green Bay, Wisconsin (52.6 percent
8. Lakewood, Colorado (52.5 percent)
9. Billings, Montana (52.5 percent)
10. Madison, Wisconsin (52.3 percent)

.....



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  #2  
Old Posted Jan 7, 2013, 11:49 PM
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Old Posted Jan 7, 2013, 11:56 PM
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denver was specifically retrofitted to encourage drunk driving following the passage of the horseless carrage drunken racing admendment of 1908 in the colorado state legislature.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 1:17 AM
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Just speculation, but maybe Memphis has less drunk driving because it's overwhelmingly black?

African Americans have much lower rates of binge drinking than the population at large, so maybe that translates to less drunk driving?
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 2:11 AM
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I was surprised to see Denver so high, since it shares a lot of highly urban qualities of cities not high on the list: mass transit including light rail, lots of bike infrastructure, all making it easy to get around dense walkable neighborhoods. It seems like the alternatives are readily available; any locals that could give some insight?

Of course, Phoenix, Houston, and the like are obvious: when a lot of your bars are in strip-malls on roads with poor access to anyone expect motorists, what do you expect to happen after last call?
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 2:39 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Just speculation, but maybe Memphis has less drunk driving because it's overwhelmingly black?

African Americans have much lower rates of binge drinking than the population at large, so maybe that translates to less drunk driving?
That would make sense only if Detroit - a city with an even higher percentage of black residents - weren't so high, which actually kind of surprised me. I knew the city would rank fairly high in traffic fatalities; anyone who has ever driven there would not be surprised to see it high on the list. But, I was surprised to see it so high on the drunk driving list.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 2:41 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Columbusite View Post
I was surprised to see Denver so high, since it shares a lot of highly urban qualities of cities not high on the list: mass transit including light rail, lots of bike infrastructure, all making it easy to get around dense walkable neighborhoods. It seems like the alternatives are readily available; any locals that could give some insight?
You do know how much we like beer, right?
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 2:43 AM
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NYC's #s make sense as public transit is so widespread. No point in driving drunk if you have so many other options...
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  #9  
Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 5:44 AM
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Any city that doesn't have 24/7 transit is encouraging drunk driving. Or at least transit that runs until an hour or so after last call.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 6:02 AM
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The list is a non-metropolitan area list, as is understood, im sure. Small sized cities that center major metropolitan areas were excluded. It explains why El Paso and San Antonio were listed, but Kansas City and St Louis were not.

From my experience, traffic accidents where I grew up (rural/suburban) were always higher than where I currently reside (urban). I use to suggest that this is due to the transportation options of major cities (rail,bus,taxi) in moments of intoxication. When I look back, I see that many deadly crashes occurred on high speed roads with subdivisions nearby, as well as deer, and sudden stops. They're worse in the early morning hours, but they still occur midday, and at rush hour. Every time I go home there's a new story. I'm convinced its poor urban planning.

Last edited by Xing; Jan 8, 2013 at 6:24 AM.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 6:54 AM
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Drunk driving in San Francisco would be terrifying. Drunk walking in San Francisco would be a challenge.

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Originally Posted by J. Will View Post
Any city that doesn't have 24/7 transit is encouraging drunk driving. Or at least transit that runs until an hour or so after last call.
Bars stop serving at 2 am here, but they don't close until 4. Our neighborhood is about a mile from one of the main arteries into downtown, and every night at around 2:30 I'll see an uptick in traffic on our street and even a few taxi cabs. The buses stop running at midnight, which is ridiculous.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 7:12 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Columbusite View Post
I was surprised to see Denver so high, since it shares a lot of highly urban qualities of cities not high on the list: mass transit including light rail, lots of bike infrastructure, all making it easy to get around dense walkable neighborhoods. It seems like the alternatives are readily available; any locals that could give some insight?
It's making strides, but its transit ridership is middling at best, and it's only dense in a sunbelt-except-California way.

It also seems to focus a lot of nightlife on one district, which suggests that a lot of people in close-in neighborhoods might go there rather than their own closer nightlife districts. Just a guess.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 9:33 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas View Post
Drunk driving in San Francisco would be terrifying. Drunk walking in San Francisco would be a challenge.
That's why drunk biking is so popular.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 9:37 AM
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I would probably wrap around a tree cartoon style. I did a little drunk biking this summer, but the "hills" I encountered were tame compared to anything in San Francisco.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 9:44 AM
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Quote:
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I would probably wrap around a tree cartoon style. I did a little drunk biking this summer, but the "hills" I encountered were tame compared to anything in San Francisco.
Fortunately, we have almost no street trees
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 3:57 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xing View Post
From my experience, traffic accidents where I grew up (rural/suburban) were always higher than where I currently reside (urban). I use to suggest that this is due to the transportation options of major cities (rail,bus,taxi) in moments of intoxication. When I look back, I see that many deadly crashes occurred on high speed roads with subdivisions nearby, as well as deer, and sudden stops. They're worse in the early morning hours, but they still occur midday, and at rush hour. Every time I go home there's a new story. I'm convinced its poor urban planning.
That's because it is poor transportation planning. Essentially we've made a system in the burbs where we say "you have to drive drunk to get home" on one hand and then "oh, but we'll fine you if we catch you driving drunk" on the other. And then we say "if you drink at home, you're an alcoholic, but if you're at a party, it's fine"...Essentially, we've set things up vis-à-vis alcohol so that no matter what you do, you're screwed.

The other thing I don't understand is why premiums are higher in the city. The severity per incident is greater--significantly so--in the suburbs. It seems to me that insurance companies wind up subsidizing unsafe drivers while gouging drivers who don't.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 6:07 PM
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 6:32 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LMich View Post
I knew the city would rank fairly high in traffic fatalities; anyone who has ever driven there would not be surprised to see it high on the list. But, I was surprised to see it so high on the drunk driving list.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of those pulled over are either suburbanites who drive into the downtown area for the casinos, bars, restaurants, and sporting events (sometimes upwards of 100,000). I would bet another large segment would be 19 and 20 year olds coming back from a night in Windsor.

A better study would be to measure metropolitan areas. It hurts a city like Detroit that accounts for barely more than 10% of its metropolitan population, but draws a massive number of people to the city nightly.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 6:35 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hammersklavier View Post
That's because it is poor transportation planning. Essentially we've made a system in the burbs where we say "you have to drive drunk to get home" on one hand and then "oh, but we'll fine you if we catch you driving drunk" on the other. And then we say "if you drink at home, you're an alcoholic, but if you're at a party, it's fine"...Essentially, we've set things up vis-à-vis alcohol so that no matter what you do, you're screwed.

The other thing I don't understand is why premiums are higher in the city. The severity per incident is greater--significantly so--in the suburbs. It seems to me that insurance companies wind up subsidizing unsafe drivers while gouging drivers who don't.
I can only speak to where I live which is a Philly suburb in Jersey but if one is drinking and driving it is because of laziness. There are plenty of cabs, buses, and rail options to get around from the bars and if the worst comes to worst you can walk a few miles to get home. Also, house parties are more popular then going to bars in the farther out suburbs because people can stay over and do not have to drive and the houses are spaced out enough that it does not bother the neighbors.
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Old Posted Jan 8, 2013, 7:42 PM
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Originally Posted by fflint View Post
Fortunately, we have almost no street trees
Yes, but parked cars and the asphalt in the middle of the street hurt just as bad!

As has been mentioned, locating bars in strip malls in cities with no transit definitely encourages this, but I would also contend that traffic engineers and their 12ft wide lanes on 6 lane arterials (giving drivers the horrible illusion of control and safety) is almost as bad. Wide lanes = speed = worse crashes. It always baffles me whenever I go back to Phoenix (a city I lived in for 15 years) how fast people drive on surface streets there.
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