"Pennsylvania has such a high DUI fatality rate because we have so many rural roads...not because the PLCB doesn't control sales of alcohol very well."
While PA does rank 6th worst in total in the US for Rural Road fatalities (2009) we rank 16th worst in DUI fatalities (2011). For fatalities per 100 million rural road miles driven PA isn't in the top ten or even top twenty but is number 23 (2009).
I had this page full of numbers and charts and math to prove the point but it comes down to this:
Of the six border states and PA itself, PA is 5th worse in rural road death rate per 100 million miles traveled. It also turns out that PA is 5th worse in DUI fatalities. In fact the rural road death rate and the DUI fatality rate coincide with each other for all seven states. New Jersey has the lowest rural road and DUI fatality rate and West Virginia has the highest. Common sense shows that the rural road fatality rate is a causation of DUI rate and not the other way around. Maybe the next excuse by the clerks will be to blame PennDot because we have too many potholes...anything but the lack of control by the PLCB
| STATE | Rural Road | ||
| Death Rate | |||
| New Jersey | 1.48 | ||
| Maryland | 1.89 | ||
| New York | 1.95 | ||
| Ohio | 2.2 | ||
| Pennsylvania | 2.23 | ||
| Delaware | 2.41 | ||
| West Virginia | 2.62 | ||
| (rates based on per 100 million miles traveled) | |||
Looking at DUI fatality rates per 100,000 population we have
New Jersey - 1.7
New York - 1.9
Maryland - 2.7
Ohio - 3.0
Pennsylvania - 3.4
Delaware - 4.0
West Virginia - 4.7
I do want you to notice that the 4 states with better than PA's DUI rates all have private liquor sales and the one other control state (WV) has a worse DUI rate.
You could say that having the PLCB is killing more Pennsylvanians than would happen without it..
2 comments:
This is a disgusting posting and you should be ashamed. My close friend was killed by a drunk driver in NJ. On a 2-lane road he crossed into her lane and struck her car head on. Further, my best friend's son's girlfriend was killed by a drunk driver, also on a 2-lane road in PA. Somehow you take our pain and twist it into some debate point. DUI is the blame of the user and maybe an over zealous bartender. Sure, these deaths are just a number to you but I sure hate to see that you use their deaths and our pain to profit some argument even if it is indirectly. I can assure you, sir, that no one at either funeral gave a single thought about whether the killer was able to purchase their alcohol in a state that was or was not liquor controlled.
Maybe you could leave the death of loved ones out of your debate and consider that anyone killed by a drunk driver is just plain wrong.
I'm very sorry for your pain. I've lost friends to drunk drivers as well, and it's a pain that never goes away.
But I'm disgusted by the way the proponents of continuing the PLCB have used DUI deaths merely to sustain their jobs, and their political power. All I'm doing is pointing out that their arguments are hollow, and that they deface the memories of your loved ones -- and mine -- for their own selfish purposes.
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