Energy: A Lifesaving Benefit of the Crisis

The National Safety Council has developed a somewhat macabre knack for guessing just how many people will be killed on the nation’s highways over holiday periods. But in the past six weeks it has got two welcome surprises. For the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, the N.S.C. had predicted 625 to 725 traffic deaths; the final count was 542, down from 679 the year before. Then, over the four-day Christmas weekend, the council counted 520 deaths, v. 595 in the three-day 1972 period. It was the lowest four-day Christmas figure since 1951.

Spotty bad weather that kept drivers home in some parts of the nation is a partial explanation, but the lower death rates seem to be due mostly to the energy crisis, which is making motorists drive more slowly and less frequently. N.S.C. statisticians now express hope that if shortages and higher gasoline prices reduce driving by 10%, and if new speed limits of 50 or 55 m.p.h. are widely obeyed, as many as 14,000 of the 56,000 U.S. deaths caused annually by auto accidents can be avoided.