Diabetes

I could just present you with this list, showing accidental deaths surpassing diabetes as a leading cause of death in the US.  But I wouldn't do that to you.  Because the truth behind the chart is that motor vehicle accidents account for 46,000 of the accidental deaths, so diabetes still wins at 71,000 (Congratulations, Insulin Resistance!).

I might show you this chart, in which diabetes doesn't even rank globally, while RTI's are climbing quickly. But you could claim the deaths due to ischemic heart disease are likely being contributed to by diabetes.

....At which point I'll claim both for cars!  I WIN!

How'd I do that?

Research.

We're all pretty aware at this point that diabetes is part of  metabolic syndrome, yes?  And a major risk factor for metabolic syndrome is what now?  Obesity!  And taking public transit is associated with walking 8.3 more minutes per day on average, or an additional 25.7–39.0 kcal. Hill, et al, estimate that an increase in net expenditure of 100 kcal/day can stop the increase in obesity in 90% of the population. Additional walking associated with public transit could save $5500 per person in present value by reducing obesity-related medical costs.

But there's more:   Each additional hour spent in a car per day was associated with a 6% increase in the likelihood of obesity. Conversely, each additional kilometer walked per day was associated with a 4.8% reduction in the likelihood of obesity. As a continuous measure, BMI was significantly associated with urban form for white cohorts. Relationships among urban form, walk distance, and time in a car were stronger among white than black cohorts.

If that's not enough motivation to get out of your car and walk a little, maybe this will be: a recent study conducted at the University at Buffalo and Erie County Medical Center showed that drivers who are moderately obese have a 21% increased risk of death in a crash. Worse yet, the morbidly obese have a 56% increased risk of not surviving a crash.  To account for this, they're proposing changes to the build of crash test dummies.

For heaven's sake all the time we're spending in cars is making the crash test dummies get fatter!

And just to prove RTIs are worse than diabetes without any Jedi mind tricks: 843 disability adjusted life years lost for diabetes, 1081 for RTIs.  That is, RTIs are robbing us of more healthy, productive life years than diabetes, even as we think they are helping us by getting us there faster or more.

Congratulations, cars....?

Murder

Seriously, I can't make this stuff up.

In fact, wish I were making this up. 


Annually, 40,000 people die as a result of injuries acquired in motor vehicle crashes in the US.   According to the CDC motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among those age 5-34 in the U.S.  As Carolyn Hirschman, in her article "Take Control of the Wheel," puts it  "As a nation we are nearly three times more likely to be killed in a car crash than by homicide, and our children face no greater risk of dying from any cause, accidental or disease related.   If we die at work, it is usually in a vehicle; since records started being kept in 1992, crashes are the number-one killer on the job, with professional drivers, salespeople, and farmers especially vulnerable."

The trend holds globally, where the number killed is 1.3 million annually.  Compare that to a global rate of 490,000 intentional homicides in 2004 (Yeah, every-professor-I've-ever-had, I Wikipedia'd it.)  

You are in more danger driving the kids to soccer or to the store for milk than taking a pleasure stroll through Detroit.  So why isn't Dick Wolf making serious syndication dollars off Law and Order: DMV?

Because car murders are a legitimized form of violence. We accept driving fatalities as inevitable.  There are some car crimes that are becoming delegitimized: drunk driving, the most egregious of road rage incidents.  But for the most part, as the authors of Carjacked put it: "Americans on the whole still believe our cars and roads are safe and that it is individual drivers who are responsible for automotive injuries and deaths.  News reports of any crash rarely treat it as a tragedy whose repercussions can last for decades.  They inevitably treat it as a stroke of really bad luck or as inevitable due to poor driving conditions or bad driving behavior, rather than as part of a pattern that can be broken by driving less, using safer modes of transit, regulating car companies and enforcing behavior on the road.  And thus Americans, on the whole, like the car companies we buy from and the government we elect, have resisted regulation and enforcement."

People die in horribly violent ways, at a higher rate than by homicide, but no one's on the news asking "What are the police going to do about this?  This is ruining our suburbs!"  No one worries that the tourists will stop coming to your suburb to see..............(Ok, I can't think of anything...your awesome collection of strip malls?) because of concerns about car violence.  But not only do consumers excuse it, they're accomplices.  


While the automotive manufacturers distract us with the ways they're making cars safer through engineering and design with one hand, they're distracting us in our vehicles with the other.  Each day, according to CDC data, more than 16 people are killed and more than 1,300 people are injured in crashes involving a distracted driver.  While distracted driving is increasingly being legislated against and becoming an enforcement priority, cars are getting computer screens because you''ll buy the cars that have them: "Initially, putting Internet access in the car sounds like a distraction and frivolous but as time passes it will become a part of our lives and we will feel uncomfortable not having access," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecoms analyst."I think this is going to grow into a vibrant sector."


Here's a hint: your safety is only as good as their bottom line.  No matter how good their ad execs are,  they're still not in it for you, or your kids.  The way to stop this epidemic is by hurting their bottom lines--or even better, voting with your feet. 


Otherwise, it's time for my L&O franchise.  Sure a plushie-lovin', horse-and-rider fetish -havin', sci-fi role-player wielding a compressed gas knife (I may have mixed some Bones in there.  Also, these shows are a little too into fetishes.) is infinitely more sexy than a soccer mom fumbling with her cell phone, but Soccer Mom's way more deadly.  


Hey--people could even watch it on the screens in the car.  Synergy!