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I am referring primarily to the way that MADD and most organizations with an interest in presenting drunk-driving fatality statistics in the worst possible light use the data, not the data itself.

1) When they say x number of people are killed by drunk drivers annually, they include all the drivers who were themselves the victim. This includes a lot of accidents that involve only a single vehicle, of course. While this is important to know, MADD makes it sound like every person who NTSA says died in an alcohol-related traffic accident was a victim of a drunk driver. In fact the driver themselves is the victim almost half of the time.

2) They also include legally intoxicated cyclists or peds who are killed which is about 10% of the total.

3) For the remainder, about 30% or so of the deaths, fault is not assigned by the data, so this number includes accidents where the person who had alcohol in their system was not actually at fault in the accident.

The result is that in actuality, if you want to say how many people are victims of drunk drivers each year, you're talking about at maximum half of the number that gets tossed around, and at minimum, as little as 20% (if half of the cases were not the drunk person's fault). The reality is probably somewhere around 1/3 of what they say.

It's not a data problem - it's a misrepresentation of what the data says.

This link analyzes one year of data.

http://www.alcoholfacts.org/MADDtruth.html

by Jamie on Dec 31, 2009 12:33 pm • link • report