Cars Make Suburbs Riskier Than Cities, Study Says

The automobile, long considered the ticket to freedom in suburbia, is instead turning suburban life into a territory of destruction more dangerous than urban communities, according to a study released today.

The study of the long-reaching impact of cars, trucks and suburban sprawl on the quality of life in the Pacific Northwest found that the prevalence of automobiles and auto accidents has led to more deaths and injuries in suburbs than have guns and drugs in urban settings.

“People dramatically underestimate the risks of driving and overestimate the risks of crime,” the study’s author, Alan Thein Durning, said.

“Tragically, people often flee crime-ridden cities for the perceived safety of the suburbs--only to increase the risks they expose themselves to,” the study found, citing statistics compiled by the Federal Highway Administration and Justice Department figures on juvenile offenders.

In its overlay of the risks posed by violence and drugs--the widely perceived ills of city life--with the risks associated with the reliance on automobiles in suburbs, the study covers new territory by applying existing--but rarely compared--data to census tracts rather than to race, age or other conventional standards.

While the examination focused on the cities of the Pacific Northwest, primarily Portland, Seattle and, across the Canadian border, Vancouver, British Columbia, its findings are applicable throughout the United States, its author said, with the exception of particular neighborhoods with “substantially” higher crime rates.

His book, “The Car and the City,” was published by Northwest Environment Watch, which Durning founded. It describes itself as an independent, not-for-profit research center in Seattle established to promote economic advances that do not damage the environment.

Using Police Department figures for traffic accidents and injuries linked to crimes in Seattle, for example, and then taking into consideration the greater number of miles driven by people in suburbs, he calculated that 16 out of 1,000 city residents faced the risk of injury or death in 1995 due to either traffic accidents or crime, while 19.2 out of 1,000 suburban residents faced the same risks.

More specifically, he calculated that the crime risk for city residents was 10 out of 1,000, and for suburban residents it was 1 out of 1,000. But the traffic risk for city residents was 6 out of 1,000, while that same figure was more than three times higher, 18.2 out of 1,000, for those living in suburbs.

Building on work that appeared earlier in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., Durning wrote:

“Traffic accidents kill more Northwesterners each year than gunshot wounds or drug abuse do; almost 2,000 people in the region died--and 168,000 were injured--in car wrecks in 1993 alone. . . . The young are especially endangered. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death among Americans aged 10 to 24, and 5- to 15-year-olds are the age group most likely to be run over by motor vehicles while bicycling.”

And going back to 1980, he said, those killed by cars represent “far more than have died or been injured as a result of violent crime.”

Jim Hedlund, associate administrator for traffic safety programs of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said that national figures indicate rural driving is roughly twice as dangerous for young people, with 34% of the fatalities of 15- to 20-year-olds occurring in urban areas, and 66% occurring in rural precincts.

“It’s very clear rural [driving] is more dangerous than urban [driving] for kids and everybody else,” Hedlund said.

Durning reported that crime rates vary little by neighborhood in Seattle--and that violent crime is more commonly committed by acquaintances than by strangers.

10dthan His conclusions took experts by surprise at the National Safety Council, a private research organization funded largely by businesses.

“It seems counterintuitive,” said Alan Hoskins, manager of the council’s statistics department. But, he said, “certainly driving is pretty hazardous for teenagers, and clearly teenagers do more driving in the suburbs than urban teenagers do in the city.”

On the other hand, he said, any comparison of risk must weigh “the perception of control.”

Given a choice between the risks of the automobile in the suburbs and violence in cities, he said, “people think they have more control of the hazards they are exposed to when they are driving a car.”