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Smartphones Are Killing Americans, But Nobody's Counting (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: Over the past two years, after decades of declining deaths on the road, U.S. traffic fatalities surged by 14.4 percent. In 2016 alone, more than 100 people died every day in or near vehicles in America, the first time the country has passed that grim toll in a decade. Regulators, meanwhile, still have no good idea why crash-related deaths are spiking: People are driving longer distances but not tremendously so; total miles were up just 2.2 percent last year. Collectively, we seemed to be speeding and drinking a little more, but not much more than usual. Together, experts say these upticks don't explain the surge in road deaths. There are however three big clues, and they don't rest along the highway. One, as you may have guessed, is the substantial increase in smartphone use by U.S. drivers as they drive. From 2014 to 2016, the share of Americans who owned an iPhone, Android phone, or something comparable rose from 75 percent to 81 percent. The second is the changing way in which Americans use their phones while they drive. These days, we're pretty much done talking. Texting, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the order of the day -- all activities that require far more attention than simply holding a gadget to your ear or responding to a disembodied voice. By 2015, almost 70 percent of Americans were using their phones to share photos and follow news events via social media. In just two additional years, that figure has jumped to 80 percent.
yea, its not like it was in the old west when ppl carried open guns and nobody got killed because the robbers/bad guys would skip those areas
Actually, that happened FAR less that one would think, if one was forming all of one's opinions by watching violent western movies. Modern day Chicago is WILDLY more violent than anyplace in the frontier west. And most people who died in gunfights were killed with shotguns and rifles, not pistols. Pistols, the great equalizers, were considered a big factor in keeping everyone polite.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Lets compare.
Chicago, 2016, murder rate ~ 16
Dodge City murder rate had a murder rate 10x that.
source 1 (blurb answer when searching chicago murder rate 2016): https://www.google.com/search?...
Source 2: https://cjrc.osu.edu/research/...
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Of course you're taking Dodge City numbers OVER A TEN YEAR PERIOD and comparing them to annual rates in Chicago. And, pertinent to the conversation, you're not distinguishing between people beaten to death while drunk or stabbed to death, etc. as opposed to those killed using openly carried firearms. And, again, most deaths by gun in the west did NOT involve a handgun at all. Regardless, you're cherry picking a single infamous cattle town, and ignoring the fact that for the vast majority of people living in the west, someone (anyone!) in their town getting killed (let alone with a gun) wasn't a daily, weekly, or even monthly occurrence. The Hollywood portrayal is unrelated to the reality experienced by millions of people living across the midwest, the mountain states, and the west coast in the second half of 19th century.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Of course you're taking Dodge City numbers OVER A TEN YEAR PERIOD and comparing them to annual rates in Chicago.
From the link:
For instance, the adult residents of Dodge City faced a homicide rate of at least 165 per 100,000 adults per year, not sure where you get the the impression I used ten year data.
And, pertinent to the conversation, you're not distinguishing between people beaten to death while drunk or stabbed to death, etc. as opposed to those killed using openly carried firearms.
You're right, I used murder rates as a proxy for violence as it seemed to be the gist of the thread.
Didn't you're post encourage to cherry pick " Modern day Chicago is WILDLY more violent than anyplace in the frontier west.", I did a very quick search and found an article that listed multiple cities well over the rate of Chicago, not only does it appear that Chicago is not "WILDLY more violent", but actually the opposite is true.
Unless of course I take your premise that "OVER A TEN YEAR PERIOD" will not lower the numbers for a city. I could in fact use stats for the last ten years of Chicago instead of just one, and get a more dramatic difference if you think that'd help make your point.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg