High gas prices meaner fewer auto deaths

High gas prices are resulting in an important health benefit — the plummeting of US automobile fatalities. The Associated Press reports a 9 percent drop in motor vehicle deaths overall through May of 2008 compared with the first five months of 2007, including a drop of 18 percent in March and 14 percent in April. Some states have reported declines of 20 percent or more. Automobile deaths have remained relatively flat during most of the last two decades despite rising vehicle miles traveled. They totaled 42,642 in 2006, the last year complete figures were available, AP says. A yearly decline of 9 percent from that number saves more than 3,800 lives. The last time automobile deaths fell so sharply was in the Arab oil embargo of 1973-1974, when fatalities tumbled 17 percent, AP reports. Meanwhile, researchers from the Harvard Medical School and the University of Alabama looked at traffic fatalities from 1985 to 2006 and determined that for every 10 percent increase in gas prices there was a 2.3 percent decline in auto deaths. Drivers slow down and travel fewer miles in smaller vehicles with higher prices.