The New York Times has a terrific graphic that plots the number of auto fatalities per 100,000 people and the vehicle miles driven per capita from 1950 to 2011. Overall, we're driving far more vehicle-miles per capita and seeing far fewer auto deaths than we were six decades ago, but this hasn't happened in a linear fashion. Rather, as Hannah Fairfield explains, change occurs unevenly:
Plotting the two most important variables against each other — miles traveled versus deaths per 100,000 population — yields a pattern that looks like a plateau followed by a steep drop. It evokes the theory of…
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