$4 Gas = Fewer Fatalities. Maybe.
iCasualties.org reports 4118 U.S. military deaths in Iraq from March ‘03 to July ‘08. In 2005 (the last year where full data is available), 43,443 American died in road accidents. The rate of deaths per 100 million miles driven has steadily decreased. But the increasing number of miles driven means that the total number of fatalities hasn’t changed much over the past few decades. Get those drivers to drive less… ScienceDaily reports that Michael Morresey put together some tables on the topic. The public health professor at the University of Alabama reckons a 10 percent rise in the cost of gas trims traffic by 2.3 percent. His calculations suggest that $4/gallon gas equals 1k fewer monthly U.S. road fatalities. It’s not clear if Morresey’s assumptions factor in the effect of automobilists switching to a pair of wheels (with a much higher fatality rate per miles driven). It’ll be a few years before we get the bottom line.