Constant death...

[Hardball]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of U.S. traffic deaths rose nearly 1 percent in 2003 and reached a 13-year high at 43,220, the government reported on Wednesday.

Hardball

[revwardoc]

Hardball,

Did they give any statistics on the cause of the deaths; speeding, DUI, no seat belts, etc.?

[colmurph]

I'm willing to bet that alcohol was involved in about 75% of those deaths.

[darrels joy]

It was the fifth straight year road deaths rose, although passenger car fatalities decreased.

Sport utility vehicle deaths went up roughly 10 percent over 2002, with more than half of the victims in those crashes killed in rollovers.

Motorcycle deaths also jumped.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (news - web sites) said preliminary figures showed 405 more highway deaths overall in 2003 than the previous year and the most since 1990 when 44,509 people were killed.

Despite the increase in the annual death count, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled remained constant at 1.5 deaths because more people were on the road.

In 2003, more than half of those killed in passenger vehicles were not wearing safety belts.

Forty percent of all fatalities, or 17,401 deaths, were alcohol-related, essentially unchanged from 2002.

Runge, an emergency room physician, has also raised the potential dangers of light trucks sharing the road with smaller passenger cars and has addressed the propensity of SUVs to roll.

Sport utility deaths went up by 456 with more than two- thirds of victims not wearing seat belts, the safety agency said.