Vaccines Reduce Auto Crashes...?
(Source: Unsplash/Mufid Majnun.)
Since the early days of the pandemic, public health officials have sought to explain the increase in auto fatalities via the Reckless Driver™ narrative—the Reckless Driver in question being an antisocial avatar of evil who suddenly, gripped by a lockdown-induced psychosis, takes out their frustration by speeding, driving drunk, and texting while driving. Here’s a recap if you think I’m exaggerating.
In blaming the Reckless Driver™, public health officials completely ignore obvious design issues. They ignore over-engineered streets. They ignore the role of congestion in artificially slowing traffic and saving lives (and the dangerous effect of removing that congestion). They ignore intersections designed primarily for flow, not for safety.
In no other area of public health do we so systematically ignore design and environmental conditions in order to blame the victims. Not even handgun design gets such a free pass.
The latest foray takes the Reckless Driver™ story to the next level, associating reckless driving with failure to vaccinate against COVID-19. A study in the American Journal of Medicine makes that exact assertion, saying that “COVID vaccine hesitancy is associated with significant increased risks of a traffic crash.”
The premise of the study was simple. “Coronavirus disease (COVID) vaccine hesitancy is a reflection of psychology that might also contribute to traffic safety. We tested whether COVID vaccination was associated with the risks of a traffic crash.”
Stated another way, crashes are caused by Reckless Drivers™, and Reckless Drivers™ seem to be pathological in the same way people who refuse to get the COVID vaccine are, so maybe there is a link. The researchers built the premise of their their study on this flawed insight, which they included in the introduction:
The proximate causes of most crashes are human behaviors including speeding, inattention, tailgating, impairment, improper passing, disobeying a signal, failing to yield right-of-way, or other infractions. These behaviors might partially reflect health consciousness, safety mindedness, community spirit, or other psychological characteristics that are difficult to measure in a systematic manner.
The term “proximate cause” is a legal one that refers to the primary factor. If you believe that reckless driving is the primary factor in automobile crashes, then you study the psychology of the Reckless Driver™ and try to identify their psychological defects. If you believe the vaccine hesitant have psychological defects, maybe there is a connection. This is a rather dark and almost evil way of looking at our fellow humans, let alone conducting research.
Pause here and note that three out of four crashes studied involved the vaccinated. So, by the proximate causes identified in the study, vaccinated people are also Reckless Drivers™. Vaccinated people are also seemingly deficient in health consciousness, safety mindedness, or community spirit. Yes, that is an absurd conclusion, but it is the conclusion this approach leads to. Consider the logic in the following:
Reckless Drivers™ have negative psychological characteristics that lead to reckless driving.
Reckless driving is the proximate cause of auto crashes.
75% of automobile crashes involve vaccinated people.
Therefore, vaccinated people are driving recklessly.
Therefore, vaccinated people must have negative psychological characteristics.
The problem here is not the logic; it is the incorrect proximate cause. It is wrong to suggest that the primary factor in auto crashes is the brokenness of the human driver. The primary factor in some auto crashes can be reckless driving, but more often the proximate cause is improper street design.
Approach this question with a more complete understanding of the proximate cause of auto crashes and you probably don’t do this study. If you still proceed, however, you have a different set of insights.
Take the avatar of the unvaccinated: a working-age, blue-collar male, living in a suburb or rural area (that is the typical profile). Knowing how dangerous streets became—especially suburban arterials—once the congestion was removed during the pandemic, we would expect this person to experience the greatest increase in crashes. They are literally driving through the most dangerous environment one can traverse, and doing so under the most dangerous conditions (some random traffic, but minimal overall levels of congestion). The pandemic increased that danger significantly.
Not only that, we could predict their crash rate to be disproportionately high because they were out driving more than other groups. Non-professionals—especially non-professional men—were generally not able to transition to remote work but, instead, had to keep going to job sites during working hours. With reduced congestion, those work trips were now quicker but also a lot more dangerous. Again, the pandemic increased that danger, not anything to do with their vaccination status.
None of these observations were made in the study. Researchers didn’t pursue any of these obvious lines of inquiry. No truly relevant information on vaccination status and auto crashes can be teased out of the data they used. The study started with a faulty premise and was then able to reach the affirming conclusion they sought: Bad people cause car crashes, and the vaccine hesitant are bad people, so it’s not surprising they are involved in a disproportionate number of crashes. That is their conclusion, but it is wrong.
None of this is a defense of the vaccine hesitant. You can hate on them if you want, but you can’t blame them for being excessively reckless drivers. And you can’t say, as this study says, that if the unvaccinated were only aware that they are more likely to get in a car crash, it might “encourage more COVID vaccination.” How asinine.
Of course, the worst part of this is the repeated affirmation of the Reckless Driver™ narrative, the ongoing effort to shift blame away from faulty engineering, dangerous roadway design, and misdirected safety officials to the victims of automobile crashes. That is what needs to change. This ridiculously stupid study does a disservice to society by affirming that faulty premise.
And while I should just end there, I did mention the ridiculously stupid, so I feel compelled to share this set of tweets by Paul Krugman, columnist for The New York Times. Krugman is a man made for Twitter, an environment that invites one to speak whatever comes to mind, whether they have any real wisdom or not. On the topic of auto deaths, he falls into the “not” category.
Drivers in New York are driving on pre-Depression streets and highly congested highways. Statistically, they get in more crashes, but at lower speeds. That is why fewer of them die per mile traveled. In Texas and Florida, nearly everything is post-war. Almost all neighborhoods are built primarily to accommodate high-speed automobile travel. Nearly everything is a stroad, the most dangerous place to drive, which is why their death rates per mile traveled are much higher.
Either that or, just eyeballing it, it could be that the people of Florida and Texas are getting killed at greater rates because they didn’t get vaccinated and/or they voted for Trump. If I could only find a study to affirm my hunch…
Charles Marohn—known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues—is the founder and president of Strong Towns. He is a land use planner and civil engineer with decades of experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, both from the University of Minnesota.
Marohn is the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley, 2019) and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town (Wiley 2021). He hosts the Strong Towns Podcast and is a primary writer for Strong Towns’ web content. He has presented Strong Towns concepts in hundreds of cities and towns across North America.