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A Quick Thought On Epidemics

The world’s death toll from swine flu? 87 (according to the CDC)

The number of global road fatalities, using WHO’s annual figure of 1.2 million, since the swine flu outbreak was first detected (using a very rough benchmark of a month ago)? 98,630.

And yes, I know the flu could be worse (and still may) if we didn’t take all the measures, do all the reporting, etc.; and that unlike road traffic, flu offers no social/economic benefit.

Of course, a la Donald Redelmeier’s studies on elections and driving fatalities, among other things, one wonders how many traffic fatalities have been prevented by the flu outbreak, in terms of people choosing not to travel (or, have they eschewed public modes in favor of private cars, thus increasing fatalities?)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 9:26 am and is filed under Traffic safety. 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.

One Response to “A Quick Thought On Epidemics”

  1. Rob Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    On kind of a side note, the one thing that really stuck with me about your book is the how utterly clueless people are about how many people are actually killed on them every year.

    It most recently came to a point in the aftermath of the buffalo plane crash (undoubtedly a tragic event).

    However while in the office some was talking about it, and was mentioning how horrible it is. However when I said “You realize that many people die on the roads of North America every day right”

    I was some how branded as heartless…. and that little piece of knowledge was conveniently dismissed.

    As you said, people have simply come to accept deaths on our roadways as acceptable.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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