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Why Are American Drivers So Deadly? After decades of declining fatality rates, dangerous driving has surged again. (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 10 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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The cause was easy enough to identify: Data parsed by Kuhls and her colleagues showed that drivers were speeding more, on highways and on surface streets, and plowing through intersections with an alarming frequency. Conversely, seatbelt use was down, resulting in thousands of injuries to unrestrained drivers and passengers. After a decade of steady decline, intoxicated-driving arrests had rebounded to near historic highs.

... The relationship between car size and injury rates is still being studied, but early research on the American appetite for horizon-blotting machinery points in precisely the direction you’d expect: The bigger the vehicle, the less visibility it affords, and the more destruction it can wreak.

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[-] laverabe@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I'm no linguistics expert but these are the definitions from Webster

lethal applies to something that is bound to cause death or exists for the destruction of life. lethal gas

deadly applies to an established or very likely cause of death. a deadly disease

They are synonyms and most people would probably use them interchangeably. I guess the biggest difference is lethal applies to something that is about to cause death, whereas deadly applies to death that has moreso already happened.

lethal weapons, deadly accident, etc ...

[-] EfficientEffigy@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Deadly Weapon is my favorite action flick franchise

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 0 points 10 months ago

I don't think you can use lethal for a metaphorical situation where nobody can actually die. For example "Deadly smile" or "deadly fart"

There are a few examples where there's a convention around using one or the other, such as 'lethal dose' but not too many.

[-] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 10 months ago

yeah you can

[-] Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

You can definitely say lethal fart and nobody would think it weird.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 1 points 10 months ago

I don't think I've ever heard it used that way. Only deadly

this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
258 points (96.4% liked)

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