Hear, hear!

Blame it on the alcohol, not the cars.

So the alcohol is part of the story but far from the end of it. Alcohol related accidents only made up about 1/3 of the deadly accidents in the US [0]. The NHTSA identifies a few different causes of car accidents including distracted driving and drug or alcohol related accidents [1]. Also noteworthy is that Marijuana seems to cause the same issues as alcohol although the studies are a little less detailed[2]. I couldn't find long term studies on the topic but I suspect that distracted driving has gone up in the past few years since smart phones have become more popular. Distracted drivers killed about 3,000 people in 2020 [3].

What's interesting is that insurance companies seem to measure bad driving using a few different metrics including deaths per miles traveled [5]. Single vehicle crashes were also very dangerous in the rural states like Wyoming (deer are a serious problem), but for some reason Rhode Island tied with Montana at 70% of all accidents being single vehicle accidents[6].

I also couldn't find an annual figure for people disabled in car accidents, but a 2004 study found that about 1.2 million Americans live with permanent injuries from car accidents and about 41% of them are unable to work [6].

[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving [2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drug-impaired-driving [3] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving [4] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/worst-drive... [5] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state... [6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15474547/

People everywhere (well, a lot of places anyway) drink alcohol. The problem is when they go home.

Funny how alcohol on trams doesn't kill tens of thousands a year in Europe.