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by btilly 2807 days ago
That doesn't negate the point exactly because older vehicles have fewer safety features, and we know that those safety features prevent accidents. Take a look in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... and see that the fatality rate has dropped by a factor of 2 in the last 40 years. Features like ABS are a big chunk of that.

For example ABS systems reduce accident rates by

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Drunk driving reduction the majority of that.

In 1982 the fatality rate per 100,000 people was: 18.969, in 2016 it was 11.59. By comparison Drunk driving fell from 9.1 per 100k to 3.3 per 100k in 2016.

As an approximation drunk driving is ~5.8 and everything else is ~1.58. (Clearly some of those non drunk driving related saved lives also saved drunk drivers, but it's still ~3x as important as everything else put together.)

https://www.responsibility.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Al...