Statistical Bollocks

Did you know which is the most dangerous interstate highway in the U.S.?  (I’ll let you ponder that for a moment.)

According to this study, it’s Interstate 45 — with five accidents per 100 miles — which runs from Dallas to Galveston via Houston.

Which, as any fule kno, is complete nonsense — what statisticians call “bullshit” — because I-45 is also one of the shortest highways in the U.S.  And yes, it’s busy.  But ask any Texan whether they’d rather drive from Dallas to Austin on I-35, or on I-45 to Houston (about the same distance) and 35 would lose by a landslide.

But I-35, you see, is a long interstate highway (running from Laredo TX all the way north until it dies out of sheer boredom somewhere in Minnesota), so its deadliness is mitigated by long stretches of nowhere in which nothing happens (I’m looking at northern Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa, for example), so its deaths / mile count drops substantially.  Hell, I’d rather drive on the Long Island Expressway than the distance between Dallas north to Denton on I-35.  (I’ve done both, more times than I can count, and there’s no comparison.)

And for sheer white-knuckle terror, consider I-40 from California to wherever it ends on the East Coast…

Be careful of numbers, folks:  they often lie.  And by the way, the article itself is, quelle surprise, complete bollocks too because they use two totally different measurement metrics — deaths per 100 miles (distance), and deaths per million passenger-miles — which are completely different.  But hey, it’s the Daily Mail.

13 comments

  1. Try I-35 to Dallas in the pouring rain.. on a motorcycle.. during rush hour. Not fun. But I made it alive. Apparently if I was on I-45 I’d be dead.

  2. I moved from Dallas eight years ago to the Hill Country outside of San Antonio and for about five years I used I-35 going back and forth between the two cities, either sitting in the slow moving parking lot they call Austin for almost and hour or skirting miles around it to the east going 85 to 90 miles per hour to just not get run over. I-35 along that stretch is pretty much a NASCAR race most of the time and I have seen some crazy bad-stuff wrecks, almost some sort every trip.

    Now I use US-281 and 67 which takes a bit longer but it is a delightful drive with speed limits 70 and 75 a good deal of the way and nice Hill Country scenery. As for I-35, most all of my life I have lived within 70 miles of 35 in Texas, Oklahoma and Minnesota and spent a number of years in Oklahoma City where I-35 and I-40 cross over each other which is about the main reason for OKC being there at all, the place where huge trucks pass through going somewhere else.

  3. Wasn’t it Benjamin Disraeli who once said that there were “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.”?

    California 395 south of where the interstate 14 meets it north of Mojave is supposed to be the most dangerous highway in California, but Interstate 10 through Los Angeles is supposed to be pretty dangerous, too.

    The difference is as you say, between accidents per mile and accidents per passenger mile. Load 50 people into a bus and the passenger mile statistic goes way down, but accidents per mile traveled is not much lower than for a car.

  4. I’ll take I-35. 45 starts me in Oak Cliff, and my reward at the end is Houston?

    Pass. I’m surprised it’s not more deadly for random gunfire.

    1. No shit! The miles in between are alright, but the endpoints? Ugh. Of course during summer it’s too damned hot to go to an outdoor range where I can shoot my black powder revolvers. So when the urge comes, instead of going shooting on a long lunch break, I wait till darkness, then head down to Oak Cliff and shoot from the comfort of my air conditioned car, just like the locals do, while my lovely wife reloads for me as we go.

  5. Both of the times I’ve been on the road and thought something bad had a chance of happening were in California. The first was returning from a day trip down to Pasadena. It was nighttime, and people were whizzing by on the 210 at whatever speed while my Chevette was maxed out at 65. The other was more recent…was heading down to San Diego and wound up on the 241 toll road at night, with a thick fog rolling in that cut visibility to near nothing. When I saw the signs warning of the toll plaza ahead, I slowed way down to keep from slamming into it.

    I-40? I’ve driven it on various trips between Needles and Nashville (though I usually don’t go further west on it than Kingman unless I’m heading to Lake Havasu or Parker), and haven’t found it particularly hairy. The twists and turns on I-70 west of Denver are potentially more troublesome, but as I’ve only driven that in summer, even that hasn’t been that bad.

  6. “Consider I-40 from California to wherever it ends on the East Coast…”

    It ends at Wilmington, NC. I’ve been there. The sign says “Barstow, Calif. 2,554.” Of course, Barstow has a sign just like it, reporting the distance to Wilmington.

    1. drove I-40 in Tennessee last week. meh wasn’t that bad.

      One of the highways in Jersey is dreadful. If a car is 10ft long and you leave 10ft 2in in front of you, a driver will cut you off and slam on the brakes. Haven’t driven that in years, thank God.

      JQ

  7. I agree with our host about statistics. One of the things I have noticed is that the media – whichever kind you care to name – seems to be interested only in making things sound worse than they really are. (This is where things such as “heat index” come from.)

    I have traveled I-40 it’s entire length, from Barstow to Wilmington, (…not all at once, mind you), and the only place I have seen real trouble was in or near the cities. I’m pretty sure that’s true with most interstate highways.

    However, there are times when I will take the slower, more rural US or state routes, just to avoid playing bumper-car with all the trucks.

    1. If it bleeds, it leads and if it doesn’t bleed then make it bleed appears to be the motto of the alleged media types. And then thy wonder why the country is divided.

      JQ

  8. I’ve driven both the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway end-to-end, and the fact that there aren’t more fatal wrecks on those roads is proof that God protects drunks and fools, and that most people during those roads have double-coverage.

    One comes to mind, I was taking the bus to work, going up the NJ Turnpike. We’d had an early-morning snow, the road was snow-covered, and the bus was doing a sensible speed given the conditions, maybe 30-35 mph. This yahoo in a Bronco came shag-assing up the left lane like his head was on fire and his ass was catching. Couple miles later, there he was high-centered on the divider, having found out that four-wheel-drive doesn’t change the coefficient of friction. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

    I seem to recall former blogger GeekWitha45 talking about how NJ residents vote like they drive, with complete disregard for sanity.

    Mark D

    1. I lived near Princeton, NJ for the 4 longest years of my life, before I came to my senses and moved back to the USA. I completely agree with your assessment of New Jersey drivers.

      1. I lived in NYFC for the first 35 years of my life, spent the next 20ish in NJ, now live in PA. The frightening thing about that is that each move made the gun laws BETTER, yes as bad as NJ is NYC is worse.

        Mark D

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