Red state, blue state divide reflected in grim statistic: fatal traffic accidents

I wonder if it is true that the difference is not related to political differences. If people are more cooperative and caring, I would expect they would be more likely to do such things as allowing people to change lanes when they need to, rather than cutting them off just to out of jerkiness.

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/20/15224677-red-state-blue-state-divide-reflected-in-grim-statistic-fatal-traffic-accidents?lite

By Stuart Silverstein
Nov. 20, 2012

The nation’s red and blue states often are miles apart in social attitudes and, of course, in political outlook.

It turns out that they also divide into distinct camps when it comes to a grimmer measure -- fatal traffic accidents.

To an extent that mystifies safety experts and other observers, federal statistics show that people in red states are more likely to die in road crashes. The least deadly states – those with the fewest crash deaths per 100,000 people -- overwhelmingly are blue.

In the absence of formal definitions for red or blue states, we labeled as red the states that favored Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and as blue those that supported the re-election of President Barack Obama.

The 10 states with the highest fatality rates all were red, while all but one of the 10 lowest-fatality states were blue. What’s more, the place with the nation’s lowest fatality rate, while not a state, was the very blue District of Columbia.

Massachusetts was lowest among the states, with 4.79 road deaths per 100,000 people. By contrast, red Wyoming had a fatality rate of 27.46 per 100,000.

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Some observers offered the possible explanation that blue states tend to adopt stronger safety laws, while red states opt for looser regulation, presumably leading to more fatalities. For example, red Texas last month opened a toll road with a speed limit of 85 mph, the nation’s highest.

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"No matter how you look at fatal crash rates, there are some important things that explain why states are different, and they're not political explanations," said Anne McCartt, senior vice president for research with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

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