Schneier on Security: Excess Automobile Deaths as a Result of 9/11

Weirdly enough, my dad says a lot of pedestrian fatalities are bus-related, ie: a bus turning a corner and hitting you. You would think people would turn their head...so now I have a crosswalk-system w/ an annoying robotic voice telling me to "Wait...Wait...Wait..." when there's no cars/buses in sight and I get visions of big brother.

Another good illustration:

In the past 20 years total, deer have killed more on American soil (~150-200/yr) than terrorists.

So where is the trillion dollar War on Bambi?

@Figureitout

Those crosswalks are to assist blind and visually impaired people crossing the street.

Wasn't there also a claim that since the DHS took over things like food safety and redirected agents away from inspecting food plants to confiscating 2.1oz bottles of water - that there had been a large rise in food poisoning outbreaks ?

So, in essence, one of every sixty four traffic fatalities is a traveller who is driving because of post-9/11 airport security theatre?

Overall, airline passenger miles are up during the period, and highway miles are down (the later perhaps due to economic issues). Road fatalities are also down.

I'm not convinced.

There are several confounding variables here that have not being considered. Throwing out numbers like that doesn't help anybody.

This example is one that makes me think that something is missing in the traditional assessment of risk assessment. I know the narrative of human cognitive biases and responding disproportionately to rare events, but I think that there is another effect where it comes to risk combined with a sense of agency. People accept automotive deaths because there is the perception that we all have the power to limit this risk through the way we drive. Airline crashes, terrorism and even mundane things like food and drug safety are places where we feel that we have no agency to prevent the risk so those persons that have the power, be they corporate or political leaders, are held accountable. This is probably the reason that drunk driving became less acceptable as said drivers began to remove personal agency from driving safety as drunk drivers tended to kill others no matter what they did.

We can call treating risk that we accept and risk that we don't accept differently irrational and that is where the whole issue of risk discounting can come into play, but I feel from a psychological level the issue involves agency and not people just ignoring certain risks outright.

Just to make things worse there is a counter argument which I'm not even going to try to find figures for due to too many variables and insufficient recording of information.

It's all to do with doses of radiation and the effect that such ionising of your DNA has on your life expectancy.

It is known that ionizing radiation increases with altitude and there is some evidence that airline flight staff have an increased level of radiation related diseases and thus in some cases a shortend life expectancy.

There is also an argument that body scanners might increase this risk (currently there is no data to support for/against/no effect for obvious reasons).

So some have argued that those who drive will get a lower life time dose of ionizing radiation and thus have an increased life expectancy because of it.

Personaly I'm not going to argue the case either way, I'm simply pointing out there are other arguments to consider over all, and along those lines are other arguments such as,

Aircraft have poor air quality (due to costs involved) and this has all sorts of health implications, due not just to worsening existing cardio-vascula issues but to disease transfere such as TB and SARS etc.

Further passengers are these days are effectivly "locked in" to their asigned seat and often activly discoraged from leaving it to get excercise etc by aircrew and other passengers. For many years it has been stated that this increases the risk of DVT, PE and CE, which can prove to be either permanently debilitting (Stroke) or fatal within a very short period after the flight.

Then there are risks...

You get the picture, there's very little definition or contrast and one heck of a lot of noise so the picture is almost impossible to see.

How about all the deaths that could have been avoided if the US government would have invested their tax-payers money into health care and education rather than military and surveillance...

I think the larger point is that traffic fatalities amount to one 9-11 each month, and instead of investing in mass transit and intercity rail, we subsidize more driving.

For example:

The Federal Interstate system is heavily subsidized. For the Interstate system to be financially solvent, the Federal gasoline tax would need to be raised by 40¢ per gallon NOW. That's just to make it solvent, not to mention expansion or improvement.

The Federal gasoline tax was last raised by a nickel in 1993, and is NOT indexed to inflation.

This problem is compounded by Federal CAFE standards and tax credits for electric vehicles. People who drive hybrids and plug-in electrics pay less for the roads they use, at a time when people really need to be paying more.

If you buy a Chevrolet Volt, you are eligible for $7,500 worth of Federal tax credits. The Volt is a luxury car. Taxpayers are being asked to subsidize luxury for people who can afford it on their own just fine. Luxury is supposed to come at a premium.

So, instead of treating intercity rail as a national security priority, we have State governors like Scott Walker turn away close to a billion dollars worth of federal dollars to build high speed rail, so that more people drive dangerous, subsidized automobiles.

None of this War on Terror is about saving lives. There are cheaper, less invasive ways of saving American lives (like encouraging people to use transit and incentivising urban living instead of subsidizing suburbs).

The War on Terror is a new Cold War. It's about subsidizing industry.

I'd like to study how accident statistics decompose.

How dangerous is intra-metro area travel compared to inter-city travel? I lived in NYC for many years -- I'd argue that the trip from a home in Brooklyn to JFK, Newark or La Guardia to fly to Boston is more dangerous than the drive on I-95/I-84/I-90 between NYC and Boston or NYC and Washington, DC.

The body count's pretty irrelevant. At least in the eyes of people allocating funds for safety, security, etc., the threat from terrorism is to the legitimacy of the government -- are they doing enough? Were their prior decisions right? Is the government strong/smart/modern enough?

"The Federal Interstate system is heavily subsidized"

...except if you consider what would happen to US productivity without an effective interstate road system.

One can easily argue that every dollar spent on interstate highways is earned-back multiple times in tax revenue.

Well I'm going to call errata on your errata and say that you were right. "In the months after..." is correct, even if it took more than 12 of them to be so.

@Les

> One can easily argue that every dollar spent on interstate highways is earned-back multiple times in tax revenue

One could, but one would be wrong to do so. What you're essentially saying is that all those traffic fatalities -- one 911 per month -- is "worth it." Just the cost of doing business. You know, traffic fatalities have a cost too, in terms of lost productivity, insurance payments, and the like.

You can also make the exact same argument you propose about the return on investment in rail -- that it pays dividends. And it would be a stronger argument. Rail is also safer and more fuel efficient, and doesn't put necessary wear on the subsidized roads.

Hauling freight in trucks across the country is kind of stupid when you could be using trains to do the same thing.

And, putting aside the freight component of the argument -- which is sidestepping the issue of traffic fatalities any way -- it's plain to see that, if we're worried about dependence on foreign oil, we'd do better to use mass transit, and ditch the tar sands oil too.

A passenger train gets about 468 passenger-miles/US gallon. A typical city bus gets about 26 passenger-miles per gallon with just SIX people on board.

A lot of people rag on mass transit because they view it as a subsidy. People don't like the idea of subsidizing something they don't use. Aside from the fact that roads are heavily subsidized too (remember, the federal gas tax would need to be raised 40¢ per gallon to make the interstate system SOLVENT), this omits the fact that urban dwellers subsidize roads to the suburbs that the urban dwellers don't use. It cuts both ways, see?

I think the "excess auto deaths" phenomenon is well established. But I wonder how much of it was really due to the excess inconvenience and annoyance of air security, versus fear of further attacks. (An anecdote: a colleague of mine switched from flying to driving on his monthly long-distance commute at the time, because his terrified wife forbade him to fly.)

If that's the case, then I wonder if we could even attribute some lives *saved* to the reassurance effect of security theater during a very nervous time.

I hate the pointless, intrusive, and demeaning TSA experience as much as anyone, but I recognize that back in 2001-2002 the situation was very emotional and complicated. I flew on September 11, 2002 -- the first anniversary -- and people were still so nervous that most planes were nearly empty and the airline employees were personally thanking everyone for flying that day.

I wonder how much motorcycles contribute to this. They are even more dangerous than cars, and to a certain demographic, nothing says "American freedom" more than riding a motorcycle. Motorcycle registrations have seen a fairly significant rise since the turn of the century, after almost 2 decades of steady decline.

@ jones

"@Les

> One can easily argue that every dollar spent on interstate highways is earned-back multiple times in tax revenue

One could, but one would be wrong to do so. What you're essentially saying is that all those traffic fatalities -- one 911 per month -- is "worth it." Just the cost of doing business. You know, traffic fatalities have a cost too, in terms of lost productivity, insurance payments, and the like."

I think it would be right for him to do so. The problems you mention would happen anyway on congested, non-interstate roads. This link supports Les' point that the interstate system was a good investment, esp for productivity. It also makes a safety argument.

http://www.publicpurpose.com/freeway1.htm

39alpha: Heh! You point out that there are two independent reasons that people might not want to fly (terrorists, security theater), and then in your last sentence you sound like you're assuming that all the people who chose not to fly did so because they "were still so nervous" (i.e., about terrorists).

I used to fly pretty frequently, but stopped doing so after the TSA harassed me a couple times. Nervousness about another attack had nothing to do with it.

The general feeling seemed to differ hugely by location. In NYC and DC, you're right, there was a definite anxiety in the air. But there was a very different feeling if you were in San Francisco or Santa Fe.

Like Clive, I'm a bit sceptical about these studies. I would however like to see some figures about the rise of traffic casualties as a result of more widespread cell/smartphone usage since 9/11. I bet they are even more significant than those attributed to people shifting from flying to driving.

Yesterday, I almost ran over a dog whose owner was too busy with his phone to keep an eye on his pet, and on my way to the gym I saw a kid nearly getting hit by a bus while crossing the street texting or updating his Facebook status. It's mind-numbing just to what extent these devices can turn perfectly normal people into complete zombies.

@ Dirk Praet

"Like Clive, I'm a bit sceptical about these studies. I would however like to see some figures about the rise of traffic casualties as a result of more widespread cell/smartphone usage since 9/11."

I'm with you on that. Multitasking has a proven negative effect on both awareness and reaction times. Plus, I've nearly been hit by people messing around on phones and such. So, I'm sure more data on that would be interesting.

The Volt is indeed a luxury car, particularly if you have enough solar panels to not need to buy power for it. Even at prevailing rates for electricity it's cheap to drive (roughly like $1/gal gas).
I happen to love mine. Best car I've ever owned, by a large margin, and I've owned some pretty cool cars.

I know my wallet started to get hard to sit on when I stopped buying gasoline (I'm a cash kinda guy).
I don't make enough money (not even close) to take advantage of the 7.5k tax credit - I only got about 2k of that. The fact that it goes to 7.5k for those with a lot of taxable income is probably not fair, I agree. The fact that the very richest don't tend to show a lot of taxable income is probably a larger factor in the whole fairness equation, however.

In this case, you could consider this a subsidy that actually saves money, in the form of jobs that pay well over at GM, versus letting yet another large company go out of business, and putting a lot more people on the dole - net costs are kind of tricky and have a lot of variables to make certainty difficult.

Let's figure in the costs of all our wars to ensure the flow of cheap oil for starters, and all the deaths they create. The situation isn't simple open and shut.

39beta: Yes, two independent reasons -- but thate first one should be "fear of terrorists," not just "terrorists!"

And I'm by no means claiming that all of the air travel avoidance of 2001-02 was due to fear, but I believe a lot of it was. People were really, really freaked out back then. Today -- with vastly increased hassles and a much reduced (actual and perceived) terrorist threat -- the situation is very different and I expect most air travel avoidance is due to TSA.

People who read Schneier are hardly representative of the general public on security/risk issues, so how you or I make/made these decisions doesn't really tell us much about the wider population. But I'm sure the question could be resolved; I think there were a lot of "are you afraid to fly" surveys taken back then.

There has been a huge push for seatbelt laws and enforcement over the past decade. That makes an enormous difference in traffic fatalities.

Oftentimes travel by plane includes delays. Once, traveling between two cities, the delay was so long I could have driven the distance 3 times while I waited. Service is just shoddy. Folks are treated awfully. Add in the fear of being abused by security, and a few bad first-hand experiences with this joke of security, and driving starts to look far more attractive.

Trains are ludicrously easy to sabotage. The disasters of a derailment often take out entire neighborhoods. Be glad we don't rely on them too much.

When was the last time you took a survey? When was the last time you skipped one? Who do you think has time to take surveys? How badly do you think this skews the results?

Subsidizing the Volt and similar cars encourages adoption in a difficult market. Long-term, this will encourage fueling stations, repair stations, better battery technology, and the rest of the ecosystem we need to break our addiction to oil.

I'm not convinced how much is all airline security. I hate to fly, but not enough to add 16 hours to my travel. OTOH, we do carpool 1000+ miles bc it is cheaper to drive 4 people even with gas prices than buy tickets for them all.

there are other reasons for increases in fatalities too. distractions (mobile phones), carelessness (people are so used to driving and cars have so many safety features people forget it is dangerous).

I bet we'd see a sharp decrease in traffic fatalities if all cars had the driver's air bags and seat belts removed, and required a spike on the steering column aimed at their chest. I say that in jest (I would never seriously recommend it ), but it would make for safer drivers. so much for no texting laws ("the phone can wait, safety first" as he nervously keeps the spike in mind).

@Figureitout\\different//
--Ok, feel like a bit of an ass; guess I can deal w/ it. But they're not even that good, need a lot of improvements and get timing issues or die altogether too quick.

@Nick Weaver,

So where is the trillion dollar War on Bambi?

[sarc]Don't give the Gun Lobby any ideas...[/sarc]

Actually, if your numbers are right, deer are more dangerous to human life (in North America) than wolves, bears, or mountain lions.

Which would be a reason to engage in a War on Bambi. Or at least, a planned culling of deer, to reduce danger to humans.

Bruce, I just wanted to let you know that I had to go the library to get a copy of Practical Cryptography because I couldn't get it for my kindle and waiting to order it over Amazon was just toooo long.

@ Nick P

You're committing a few fallacies.

First, I'm not saying the Interstate system hasn't paid off. At issue is whether expanding rail infrastructure would have been a better investment. The suburbs are not particularly productive: most jobs are in the cities. The interstate connects the suburbs to the cities, though cities can connect by rail just fine.

And second, if fewer people drove because it was easier to take rail, there would be fewer traffic fatalities. Fewer drivers mean fewer opportunities for collisions.

It's also a fallacy to suppose that larger highways mean less congestion. Larger highways make it easier to drive, which leads to more drivers, which leads to more congestion. You can't ease congestion by building bigger highways, you can only ease congestion by giving people transportation options.

@Nicholas Weaver:

Considering the role of deer in the propagation of Lyme disease, their destruction of American life and health is probably much heavier than the numbers you cited.