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HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS • HEALTH • MEDICINE • WELLNESS

AIKEN-AUGUSTA’S MOST SALUBRIOUS NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED IN 2006

SEPTEMBER 16, 2016

Dummies dying at alarming rate Actually, they’re not all dummies. Some of them are innocent victims who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever the reasons, it’s suddenly 1966 all over again on America’s highways: 2015 saw the steepest rise in highway fatalities since Lyndon Johnson was president, ending a 5-decade trend of decline. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has released the new figures, which show a 7.2 percent jump in fatalities last year as compared with 2014. The last time there was a single-year jump of that magnitude was in the aforementioned 1966,

It hasn’t been this dangerous to be a dummy since 1966.

which saw an 8.1 percent jump compared with 1965. What’s behind the increase? NHTSA blames the jump on “job growth and low fuel prices” which led to increased driving, including more liesure driving. They say all vehicle miles traveled in 2015 rose 3.5 percent over 2014, “the largest increase in nearly 25 years.” We beg to differ. Granted, NHTSA people are the experts, but in the same way guns don’t kill people, low gas prices don’t kill people; people kill people. Lurking in all the voluminous data typical of any government report are a couple of smoking guns spotted by our Research Department here at Medical Examiner World Headquarters. One chart was entitled “Percentage Change by Human Choice Category, 2014-2015.” Human choice accidents are those in which a conscious choice by the driver led to death, as opposed to, say, brakes failing, for instance. Guess what behavior was the #1 increase in human choice errors? If you guessed “DistractionAffected Fatalities,” give yourself a gold star. That category was almost twice as high as the second-place reason, failure to wear a seat belt. Another table revealed changes in who did the dying in 2015 compared to 2014. The #1 demographic in the highway fatality department: drivers under 16, up 12.4 percent from a year ago. Other teen categories were also high. Look around you in traffic and you’ll notice plenty of 30- and 40-somethings staring at phone screens while hurtling down the highway; teenagers have no monopoly on this perilous and reckless trend. They just happen to combine this bad habit with a serious lack of experience behind the wheel. There is no cure for inexperience other than experience. But surely that experience can be gained — no matter our age — without becoming yet another distracted driving statistic. +

Salubrious Letters This issue begins a new 26-part series looking at topics related to those three little words you see above running across the top of every Medical Examiner front page: health, medicine, wellness. We drew straws and the letter A won the right to start the series. What health-related topic starting with A did we choose? Turn to page 2 to find out. +

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