From the Chicago Tribune comes news of a new hotbed of risk on the road: Voting.

“The study found that on average, 24 more people died in car crashes during voting hours on presidential election days than on other October and November Tuesdays. That amounts to an 18 percent increased risk of death. And compared with non-election days, an additional 800 people suffered disabling injuries.”

The authors are none other than Donald Redelmeier and Ronald Tibshirani, whose work appears in several places in Traffic. No word on whether risk was higher for voters for the winning/losing side (as was the case in their “Super Bowl” study); or whether risk was lower in places where voting can be done by mail-in ballot.

“This is one of the most off-the-wall things I’ve ever read, but the science is good,” said Roy Lucke, senior scientist at Northwestern University’s Center for Public Safety. He was not involved in the study, which appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

Luckily, I live exactly one block from the public school in which I vote (though I do have to cross a pretty busy street).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Cars, Drivers, Etc., Risk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.