Personal freedom leads to increase in fatal injuries: study
States that have less restrictive laws regarding public safety have a higher rate of death due to injuries, according to a joint study from researchers at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
To find the correlation, researchers analyzed injury data and the strictness of state laws governing behaviors such as use of safety belts, fireworks and cell phones while driving, according to a UMass Lowell press release. For example, New York had the third-strictest laws and an unintended injury mortality rate of 25.9 per 100,000 people; New Mexico had the third most lax laws and a rate of 67.1, according to the release.
The study was published in the Feb. 18 online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
Post a comment to this article
Safety+Health welcomes comments that promote respectful dialogue. Please stay on topic. Comments that contain personal attacks, profanity or abusive language – or those aggressively promoting products or services – will be removed. We reserve the right to determine which comments violate our comment policy. (Anonymous comments are welcome; merely skip the “name” field in the comment box. An email address is required but will not be included with your comment.)