Transport: Deadly Parallel

Last March The New Republic carried a searching disquisition into automobile accidents, made no mention of drunken driving as a cause. For this omission it was soundly berated by that pious, prohibitionist magazine, The Christian Advocate. Three weeks ago The New Republic replied editorially: “The reason we did not mention it in our earlier discussion was that our article was confined to the major factors in the annual death toll, which is now running to about 38,000 annually, and we were not and are not aware that drunkenness is one of these factors. The Travelers Insurance Co. . . . while recognizing that statistical information is incomplete and unreliable, estimates that in the year 1935, 3.1% of all drivers in accidents were ‘under the influence of liquor.’ Of those involved in fatal accidents, the percentage given is 6.8.”

Last week, the American Business Men’s Research Foundation in Chicago released a simple graph which apparently contradicted The New Republic and Travelers Insurance Co. On the basis of monthly figures on tax-paid liquor withdrawals issued by the U. S. Bureau of Internal Revenue and monthly figures on automobile deaths issued by the National Safety Council, A. B. M. R. F. started two lines across a graph representing the 31 months since Repeal. One line represented liquor consumption, the other automobile deaths. The two lines wobbled along, moving up and down from index 0 to index 115, but always their courses were almost exactly parallel. Each line fluctuated regularly with the seasons. As automobile deaths increased from the annual low in January or February to the midsummer maximum, they were accompanied by a similar rise in the consumption of liquor. Year’s peaks were reached in the football season just before the Christmas holidays.

A. B. M. R. F.’s conclusion:

“The . . . graph, charting this parallel record of the expanding use of liquor with the general upward trend in automobile deaths, becomes its own commentator and manifestly makes it difficult . . . to successfully challenge the conclusion that an increased consumption of alcoholic beverages must be regarded as a definite factor in the endlessly growing record of automobile tragedy.”