Ban drivers under 60

[jody]

Motor Vehicle Traffic accidents are the leading cause of accidental deaths and are involved in 54 times more accidents than the Evil Gun-Demon.

It is possible that drivers who receive traffic tickets are more likely to cause an accident than those who do not. If that assumption is correct, then the traffic ticket rate per age group might identify those who put society at great risk if we allow them to exercise their right to drive an automobile.

The second report quoted below suggests that society could substantially reduce Unintentional MV Traffic deaths if we ban drivers under age 60. I'm willing to sacrifice for the overall social welfare. Are you?


QUOTE
AGE 1-85
1 Unintentional MV Traffic 41,806
2 Unintentional Fall 13,314
3 Unintentional Poisoning 12,736
4 Unintentional Unspecified 6,646
5 Unintentional Suffocation 5,122
6 Unintentional Fire/burn 3,443
7 Unintentional Drowning 3,383
8 Unintentional Natural/Environment 1,616
9 Unintentional Other LandTransport 1,409
10 Unintentional OtherTransport 1,409
11 Unintentional Pedestrian,Other 1,261
12 Unintentional Other Spec.,classifiable 1,237
13 Unintentional Struck byor Against 934
14 Unintentional Other Spec.,NECN 903
15 Unintentional Firearm 775
16 Unintentional Machinery 676
17 Unintentional Pedal cyclist,Other 167
18 Unintentional Cut/pierce 84
19 Unintentional Overexertion 13
20


Collection of National Data
QUOTE
Estimated percent of licensed drivers who received a traffic ticket within each age group.
Overall 6.0%
16-19 11.4%
20-29 9.7%
30-39 7.1%
40-49 5.0%
50-59 3.8%
60 or older 2.0%
UNQUOTE

[MrBenchley]

1. Confirms what I suspect about RKBA "enthusiasts"

No matter what they read, somehow their gun obsession creeps in and they have some sort of spasm...."Let's see percentage of of traffic tick...--GUNS!!! Arggh!"

[Spoonman]

3. And confirmation

of the extreemist gun grabbers.
REAL problem ... --arggh GUNS!!!
Criminals ... --arggh GUNS!!!
GUNS Bad - Criminals Good

[MrBenchley]

6. Gee, spoon...

Find us ANYBODY saying anything remotely like this: "GUNS Bad - Criminals Good"

[Township75]

8. Peddle it somewhere else,

With the number of unintentional deaths due to MV greatly outnumbering BOTH unintentional and intentional gun deaths, the anti RKBA lunatics can only drool and strive to rid the world of guns. I guess it isn't about saving the children and lives after all...so sad.

[MrBenchley]

10. Gee, in other words...

"Here's an article about automobi---ARRGH! Guns!!!"

[dustind]

28. I think the intent was to show guns are not dangerous (nt)

nt

[MrBenchley]

29. Who knows?

I long ago stopped trying to follow RKBA delusions....

[Spoonman]

2. Face it Jody

You data is 3 years old.
Sorry, but thats seems to be as valid a point as you'll get from the gun grabbing extreemist around here.

I see the point your trying to make, and your right.

Maybe prohibition would work again too.

[jody]

4. Bring back prohibition, that's the only way

I'll get a decent price for my corn crop. :toast:

:-) :7 :D

[CO Liberal]

5. You Have a Problem With Jody Posting 3-Year-Old Data......

...yet you post 3-year-old stories to try and make YOUR point, Spoonman?

:-)

[Spoonman]

23. Hello, ever hear about sarcasm?

It was an indirect reference to your "irrelevant" stance on "old" stories.

[izzie]

7. I am not sure what you wish to get to me but....

Face it as you get older things slow down and that means you do not act as fast so testing for older drivers is good. I am older driver and I have seen alot of them. I should be tested also.

[iverglas]

9. statistics for dummies

Estimated percent of licensed drivers who received a traffic ticket within each age group.
Overall 6.0%
16-19 11.4%
20-29 9.7%
30-39 7.1%
40-49 5.0%
50-59 3.8%
60 or older 2.0%

What is missing from this picture?

Hmm. How about just a wee bit of information about something like HOW MANY KILOMETRES (okay, miles) were driven by drivers in each age group, on average?

If you only drive a couple of hundred miles a year, your odds of racking up traffic tickets might somewhat reasonably be regarded as lower than the odds of a person who drives many thousands of miles a year. Not, I hasten to point out, that I am saying that the number of traffic tickets a driver accumulates in a year is some sort of 1:1 ratio with the number of miles driven. Let me be clear. I am not saying that.

What I'm saying is that I would expect to find at least as close a correlation between miles driven and number of traffic tickets accumulated as this table shows between age of driver and number of traffic tickets accumulated. Age might indeed be a better indicator (predictor) of the probability of getting a traffic ticket (i.e. if number of miles driven were factored out to produce an "all other things being equal" comparison). But it is not the ONLY factor.

Anybody suggesting that age be used as the ONLY factor for discriminating among classes of individuals in deciding who gets a driver's licence and who doesn't had better be prepared for a big expensive loss in the courts when one of those young folks challenges that law.

.

[iverglas]

11. and more of the same

Isn't it fun how we can just pretend that things which have been said repeatedly, and never refuted or otherwise addressed, have just never been said at all?

WISQARS Leading Causes of Death Reports, 1999 -- 2000

AGE 1-85
1 Unintentional MV Traffic 41,806
2 Unintentional Fall 13,314
3 Unintentional Poisoning 12,736
4 Unintentional Unspecified 6,646
5 Unintentional Suffocation 5,122
6 Unintentional Fire/burn 3,443
7 Unintentional Drowning 3,383
8 Unintentional Natural/Environment 1,616
9 Unintentional Other LandTransport 1,409
10 Unintentional OtherTransport 1,409
11 Unintentional Pedestrian,Other 1,261
12 Unintentional Other Spec.,classifiable 1,237
13 Unintentional Struck byor Against 934
14 Unintentional Other Spec.,NECN 903
15 Unintentional Firearm 775
16 Unintentional Machinery 676
17 Unintentional Pedal cyclist,Other 167
18 Unintentional Cut/pierce 84
19 Unintentional Overexertion 13
20

Oh look. More people are unintentionally killed as a result of contact with motor vehicles than are unintentionally killed as a result of contact with firearms.

Well quelle great big surprise.

On a day when I go shopping, I am in "contact" with, oh, quite a few hundred cars -- sufficiently close contact that I might be killed by any one of them. All in the space of a couple of hours.

I have almost never in my life been in sufficiently close contact with a firearm that I might have been killed by it. Once in a while I talk to cops, granted, and they have firearms. So let's say that in a year I am in sufficiently close contact with about a gazillion motor vehicles that one of them might kill me, and in that same year I am in sufficiently close contact with a couple of dozen firearms that one of them might kill me.

Damn. I'll bet someone will profess to be surprised if tomorrow I am killed in a motor vehicle crash, and wonder why I wasn't killed in a firearm shooting, if guns are so all-fired dangerous and all.

The odds of something happening really do have to be considered in light of the opportunity for it to happen, wouldn't we think?

I mean -- what are the odds of me winning the lottery when I never buy a ticket?

If there are, say, 280,000,000 people in the US and 41,806 of them die in unintentional car crashes in a year, does everyone have a 6697 to 1 chance of dying in a car crash? I really just don't think so.

No more do I think that every one of those 280,000,000 people has a 3,612,903 to 1 chance of dying in an unintentional firearm shooting.

Somehow, I just kinda have this gut feeling that people who spend hours a day on the public highways have a much higher chance of dying in a car crash than people who never leave their homes, and people who are frequently in the vicinity of accessible firearms have a much higher chance of dying in a firearm shooting than I do.

But hey, let's just pretend that this was never pointed out. Again.

.

[RoeBear]

12. Hmmm!

Are you sure about how many guns you come in contact with each day? Did you forget about all the evil people who have CCW permits? Depending what state you live in you might be in contact with dozens of guns every day and never know it.

But anyways, I'm glad you have admitted how rare it would be to die of a gun accident.

[iverglas]

16. does NO ONE pay an iota of attention?

"Are you sure about how many guns you come in contact with each day?
Did you forget about all the evil people who have CCW permits?
Depending what state you live in you might be in contact with dozens
of guns every day and never know it."

Well, all that might be relevant to something, and possibly even true ... IF I LIVED IN A STATE.

I do not live in a state. I live in a province. NO ONE has a "CCW" permit anywhere within 60 miles of me. (The border is 60 miles away, but I figure as long as I stay on this side of it, I'm relatively safe.)

I don't know, perhaps there are half a dozen private individuals in this city who have permits to carry concealed firearms. I can't think of who they would be, or why they would have such permits, and I can't imagine any reason that I would be in close conduct with their firearms. Perhaps you know better.

"But anyways, I'm glad you have admitted how rare it would be
to die of a gun accident."

That's just so gosh-darned cute, the way you use the word "admitted" to characterize my statement of something THAT I HAVE NEVER DENIED. I should be more precise. The way you use the word "admitted" to describe a statement THAT I NEVER MADE.

I mean, unless you can find somewhere that I used the word "rare" to characterize accidental firearms deaths. Please. Find it. And then QUOTE ME, or retract your false allegation. Hahahaha. I'm so funny when I pretend that I'm talking to people who have the shred of honour that it would take to do something like that.

It would be beyond BIZARRE for me to die in a "gun accident". It would be virtually a bloody MIRACLE. Now, since I of course reject the notion that miracles happen, if I did actually die in a "gun accident" I might indeed have to admit something ... but it would not be "how rare it would be to die of a gun accident".

.

[iverglas]

19. just to help you out

You needn't feel compelled to repeat your earlier insinuation (although you might want to check back there, which was all of yesterday ago, to refresh your memory about my citizenship/location, in case you've forgotten already again).

You already did repeat it, and my short-term memory is functioning quite well enough to spare you the effort of further iteration.

.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RoeBear]

26. Welcome to...

...my ignore list.

[DoNotRefill]

13. How many cars are there in the US?

There are something like 270 million guns in the US, almost one for every person. Are there anywhere near that many cars?

Just because you don't see guns does not mean that they aren't there. Guns are much smaller than cars, after all.

[demsrule4life]

14. The last I saw was 776 cars per 1000 people in the

U.S. and have heard people complaining there is one gun for every person. Believe the 776/1000 was for year 2000. So far fewer cars but with death rates higher than guns.
http://www.unece.org/stats/trend/usa.pdf

[iverglas]

18. No.

"So far fewer cars but with death rates higher than guns."

No. Just plain no.

If you think that a "death rate" that is meaningful and useful for purposes of comparing deaths by two different causes is calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the number of cars, or the number of deaths by the number of firearms, you are so far out of the ballpark of reality that I'm just not even going to attempt to lob any of it in your direction.

Lemme just ask. Would you calculate the "death rate" for snakes -- I can't even say that, it doesn't make any sense. But what the hell. Would you calculate the death rate for snakes by dividing the number of people who die of snakebite by the number of snakes in your country?

If you did, well, let's just say there would be a lot of people pointing and laughing.

Now, if you are actually offering, as I suspect, a "death rate" calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the human population -- as I did in my earlier post in order to discount that ratio as being useful for any purpose that concerns us, which I successfully did -- yup, you'd have figures showing a higher "death rate" for motor vehicles than for firearms. No question.

Of course, if you were to calculate the "death rate" for snakebite by dividing the number of deaths by snakebite by the population of the country, you'd have a really really really low ratio. (As I recall, there are something in the neighbourhood of 10 snakebite deaths in an average recent year: that percentage is so low it doesn't show up on my pocket calculator. I think it is 0.0000035%, give or take a couple of zeros.)

Would that suggest to you that venomous snakes should be left lying around within the reach of children, or vice versa, maybe? That people should be issued "concealed snake permits" so that they could walk around department stores and bars with rattlesnakes in their pockets? That people who did own venomous snakes should not be required to keep them securely penned up? After all, the death rate for snakebite is so low, why would we worry?

I'm just ever so curious why anyone would think it remotely meaningful or useful to compare death rates for accidental death by motor vehicle and for accidental death by firearm in the first place.

What makes motor vehicles comparable to firearms for this purpose? Absolutely nothing at all that I can see, I'm afraid. I'd really much rather compare the rates for accidental death by firearm and accidental death by falling off railway bridges. Or being bit by venomous snakes. Or being hit on the head by falling fish. Or being struck by lightning.

There are about 22,000,000 lightning strikes a year in the US. About 100 people a year are killed by lightning strikes. That makes lightning strikes less dangerous than cars by a long shot, and somewhat less dangerous than firearms -- have I got this right? I guess I'd be wiser to go stand on a golf course, when the storm finally hits later tonight, than to go for a drive.

Oh look; of course someone did write it: Statistics for Dummies

It may be just me, but I don't decide how wise it is to stand on a golf course in a thunderstorm based on comparative deaths/100,000 population figures. Nor do I use those figures for deaths in car crashes to determine whether I should go out driving to buy groceries. Because I KNOW that the figure for deaths in car crashes represents a tiny proportion of the OPPORTUNITIES for deaths in car crashes that occur every year, and that the REAL CHANCE of me being killed in a car crash is EXTREMELY LOW -- and nowhere remotely near, by some order of magnitude, the 1 out of 6400 figure (or whatever I said earlier) for annual deaths in car crashes in the US -- each time that I am near a car.

And I'd just plain think myself perfectly stupid (or evil; I'd have a hard time deciding) if I used the deaths/100,000 population figure for accidental firearms deaths to decide that nothing needed to be done to protect myself or anyone else from "accidental" shootings.

.

[iverglas]

17. I don't know; who the hell cares?

"How many cars are there in the US?
There are something like 270 million guns in the US,
almost one for every person. Are there anywhere near
that many cars?"

Why are you asking me? Why don't you ask someone who said something to which your question might be relevant, or who might think it worth answering? I can't imagine who that would be ... well, sure I can. At least I can imagine numbers of people who might say that they thought it worth answering.

Why don't you try addressing WHAT I SAID? If you want to ask questions of your own, you might just go ask them somewhere without trying to make it look as if they somehow respond to WHAT I SAID. They don't.

If you were to ask:

How many cars does the average individual come into contact with in the course of a day in circumstances in which s/he could be accidentally killed by a car?

and then:

How many firearms does the average individual come into contact with in the course of a day in circumstances in which s/he could be accidentally killed by a firearm?

... well, you'd have asked the questions I suggested that someone might want to consider the answers to. RELEVANT questions. Questions that you seem to prefer to ignore. That doesn't make them, or the answers to them or the implications of those answers, go away, surely you know.

Can you IMAGINE how many viruses and bacteria there are in your country -- many of them potentially lethal? Does the fact that almost no one actually dies of, say, measles, despite all those billions and zillions of viruses out there, mean that we should stop vaccinating children against it? that we should not attempt to keep children away from sources of viral or bacterial infection? that we should not require infected children to stay home from school?

After all, it's EXTREMELY RARE for anyone to die of those infections, so why would we even consider taking precautions to protect people from that remote possibility by trying to prevent them from having contact with such a potential "causal agent" of death??

But hey, if you want to go hang out on a highway and count cars, don't let me stand in your way.

"Just because you don't see guns does not mean that they aren't there.
Guns are much smaller than cars, after all."

Just in case someone doesn't remember my answer to the similar statement just a post or two ago -- you are WRONG. Your statement that just because *I* don't see guns does not mean they are not there is WRONG, and is about as meaningful as saying that just because *I* don't see fairies at the bottom of my garden doesn't mean they are not there.

Yup, it's entirely possible that a few of the cars I pass on the highway are legally carrying hunting weapons. It's also entirely possible that someone I pass on the street is illegally carrying a firearm on his/her person. ("Illegally" because IT IS ILLEGAL for just about any non-cop looking person whom I would be passing on a street who is not, say, an RCMP officer in mufti, to be carrying a firearm.)

I quite realize that this state of affairs might be beyond your comprehension. So you might want to go right ahead and insinuate that I am lying about it as has been insinuated about someone else who stated the same thing. (Damn, Canadians are just such inveterate liars, aren't we?) Perhaps you can guess how much I'd care.

.

[demsrule4life]

20. I don't remember asking you

and whatever happened to you not replying to me? And don't your fingers ever get tired?

[iverglas]

21. lordy

"I don't remember asking you
and whatever happened to you not replying to me?
And don't your fingers ever get tired?"

This you say ... in response to a post of mine written in response to a post by someone else altogether? Do you really think I'm as easily confused as you apparently are?

You may have mistaken some expression of boredom or irritation on my part as some sort of vow not to reply to you. I dunno how you'd do that ... but if you'd care to QUOTE whatever it is you're referring to, I'll gladly try to assist you in understanding what it meant. Irrelevant and pointless though your comment might have been.

.

[demsrule4life]

22. Just goes to show you that I have no

business posting right after I get out of bed. There is nothing you can say to ever change my mind about guns it is a waste of time. There is nothing I can say to you to change your views, that would be a waste of time. We make our opinions by what we experiance throughout life. And my opinion after 30 years of law enforcement is that Iam sick and tired of seeing victims that did not have to be victims. I have been far to many murders (mostly women) that if they had a gun they would of had a chance to survive. If you really want to cut down crime the two things you should really put your energy into is 1. Stop the drug war and 2. get rid of the welfare system and put that money into schooling or job training.

[Pert_UK]

15. The biggest problem with this?....Well..........

How about considering that it is only the 40+years experience of driving that makes people over 60 less likely to get ticketed, so unless you have the preceeding years experience you aren't any safer later on?

OK Jody, so I know that you're making a point here, but I just think that this doesn't help you, but undermines your usual more logical argument.

I could also chip in that transport is a 100% necessity for the majority of people whereas guns aren't, and perhaps add in that one needs to consider the amount of driving hours vs shooting hours rather than numbers of items.........and possibly also how many accidental deaths were due to unforseeable circumstances - human error seems to play a role in the vast majority of gun deaths, whereas mechanical or "natural" factors cause many others...

IMHO of course. I'm not arguing against your position, I'm pointing out the holes in the argument, which helps you....in a way!

:-)

P.

[jody]

25. Given the "tit for tat" posting of accidents, it was my attempt

at "dry humor" with a subtle bit of logic. People who focus on "gun accidents" do so with an intensity that blinds them to other types of accidents.

If the anti-RKBA group would fight for mandatory air bags to protect driver and every passenger, it is possible that MV Traffic accidential deaths could be reduced from their current 41,806/year by several thousand. Even then, they would be far greated than Firearm accidential deaths at 775/year.

Look at how many lives we've saved because of optional air bags and mandatory seat belts.

For example, I beome very angry every time I see a pickup truck driven in heavy traffic with one or more pre-teens moving freely around in the back. I wish we could pass laws in every state banning passengers in the back and encouraging citizens to call a special number, say 922, and report such incidents and their location along with tag numbers. That would curb such incidents the very first day.

We need to discuss such things because this is the Public Safety forum.

[Pert_UK]

27. Sorry chap, I should have spotted the irony....

My bad. I knew you weren't being serious, but should have really spotted that you were highlighting some of the less logical postings that we get on here.

P.