Red State, Blue State Divide Reflected in Fatal Traffic Accidents Statistic
By: NBC News
Updated: November 20, 2012
The nation's red and blue states often are miles apart in social attitudes and, of course, in political outlook.
It turns out that they also divide into distinct camps when it comes to a grimmer measure; fatal traffic accidents. To an extent that mystifies safety experts and other observers, federal statistics show that people in red states are more likely to die in road crashes.
The least deadly states - those with the fewest crash deaths per 100,000 people -- overwhelmingly are blue.
In the absence of formal definitions for red or blue states, we labeled as red the states that favored Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and as blue those that supported the re-election of President Barack Obama.
The 10 states with the highest fatality rates all were red, while all but one of the 10 lowest-fatality states were blue. What's more, the place with the nation's lowest fatality rate, while not a state, was the very blue District of Columbia.
Massachusetts was lowest among the states, with 4.79 road deaths per 100,000 people. By contrast, red Wyoming had a fatality rate of 27.46 per 100,000.
For more on this story: http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/20/15224677-red-state-blue-state-divide-reflected-in-grim-statistic-fatal-traffic-accidents
For more on this story: http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/20/15224677-red-state-blue-state-divide-reflected-in-grim-statistic-fatal-traffic-accidents
