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Understanding traffic death rates: can we keep our children safe?

Article Excerpt
For close to two decades, children and teens in Montana and South Dakota have consistently shown higher rates of death than most of the other states in the country, meaning that more of them die before they reach adulthood. While the total death rates are the results of numerous causes, the leading cause of death for both age groups nationwide is motor vehicle crashes. If traffic-related death rates can be reduced, the overall death rates will go down as well.

To investigate the causes of and possible remedies for this problem, KIDS COUNT projects in Montana and South Dakota received funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and designed a two-part exploratory analysis. The research examined child and teen deaths from motor vehicle crashes through a quantitative statistical analysis and through a set of qualitative case studies.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

The goal of the statistical analysis was two-fold:

1. To determine which of an array of independent variables are significant, and which are not, in predicting child and teen death rates from motor vehicle crashes; and

2. To determine the relationship between the dependent variable and the several independent variables.

Further, the results of the statistical analysis would serve to guide the qualitative analysis.

The statistical analysis was empirical in nature, which necessitated starting with a large number of variables as potential determinants of child and teen death rates across the states. The hypothesized factors underlying these death rates were measured by data on socio-economic, youth risk behavior and juvenile justice variables, traffic-safety policies and community-description measures. The basic traffic mortality measures were obtained from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's National Center for Statistics and Analysis (Table 1).

The analysis focused on two measures of death rates from motor vehicle crashes: one for teens ages 11 through 19 who and one for children ages 1 through 10. While hypothesized factors relating to teen deaths are numerous, factors relating to child deaths are fewer as the degree of randomness underlying child deaths is greater. For teens, some of this randomness is removed as they can in some ways contribute to the fatal accidents through risky behavior and as inexperienced drivers.

Predictive Variables Associated with Traffic Death Rates

Teens, Ages 11 through 19 Death rates resulting from motor vehicle crashes for this age group vary greatly across all 50 states. Hawaii has the lowest teen death rate at 6.63 teen deaths per 100,000 teens, followed by Connecticut at 6.74. Mississippi finds itself at the bottom, with the highest teen death rate in the country, at 33.16, a rate about five times higher than that of Hawaii. It is the only state with a rate over twice the national average of 14.67.

Through regression analyses, the following variables were found to be significant predictors of teen deaths resulting from motor vehicle crashes:

1. The portion of a state's highway miles that is rural;

2. The portion of high school students who drove while drinking alcohol;

3. The portion of high school students who had used tobacco at least once in the past...

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