You don’t have a job, you don’t have a house, you don’t have a 401k, you don’t have health insurance, you don’t even have a car. But look at the bright side, you still have your life.
Fewer than 15,000 people died in traffic fatalities in the first half of 2010, down 9.2% from the first half of last year, according to the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration. Click here to read the report from NHTSA.
Chalk it up to safer cars, increased safety belt use and all that pressure they’ve put on those drunks to stop driving. But our declining economy is a factor in declining fatalities as well.
Traffic fatalities reached a near-term peak in 2005, when the economy was smoking hot, and everybody was driving to work or motoring around, looking for houses to flip. Fatalities have been on the decline ever since.
If fewer than 30,000 people die in car crashed this year, it will be a record low.
Imagine the headlines on any other consumer product or activity that led to 30,000 deaths on a good year. Maybe Wall Street bankers have our best interests at heart, after all.
Save a life, kill the economy.
