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army1987 comments on Moderate alcohol consumption inversely correlated with all-cause mortality - Less Wrong Discussion
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The only way that would contribute to the total mortality rate for drinkers being lower than for non-drinkers would be if I'm more likely to kill a pedestrian given that the pedestrian is sober than given that the pedestrian is drunk.
(OTOH, an effect such as “I'm (going to get) drunk, so I'm not driving tonight -> I'm walking back home rather than driving to there -> I'm less likely to die walking a mile than driving a mile” would be in the right direction, though --I guess-- much smaller than other effects. My money's on the biggest effect being the one about income.)
Apparently walking drunk is actually eight times more dangerous (per mile traveled) than driving drunk. So we would not expect moderate drinkers to have lower death rates due to walking home after drinking - if anything, this would increase their death rate.
I'm extremely surprised by this. I can't see how walking can be that dangerous, provided you walk on sidewalks (or in pedestrian zones) and are careful when crossing the street. What population does the “eight times” statistic apply to?
The text is here. It's based on a couple of assumptions - that drivers and pedestrians are equally likely to be drunk, and that drunken trips are representative of all pedestrian trips. I doubt there's hard data out there on whether these things are true, since nobody does random checks of pedestrians.
I don't assume these things of sober pedestrians, let alone drunk ones. I assume people with impaired reflexes and judgement are more likely to cross the street when it's not safe to do so, fall down, etc.
Alcohol is also involved in a lot of hypothermia cases. Your circulation is worse, but you feel warmer and you're more prone to falling down. I had a friend who nearly spent the night in a snowbank staggering home from a college party - if she'd been a bit drunker and passed out, she would have frozen.
Yeah, I'd bet that
underestimates the fraction of miles walked drunk by several times; if it's underestimated by a factor of 8, then driving drunk is as dangerous as walking drunk. (But I might be overestimating it, due significant differences between my country and the US, e.g. here in Italy, whereas you don't get arrested if you're caught driving moderately drunk for the first time,¹ I'm pretty sure the probability of getting caught is much larger than 1 in 27,000 miles, given that I know at least four people to whom that happened. Therefore I guess people are much more reluctant to drive when drunk where I am than over there. Also, Italian towns are less car-friendly than I guess US towns are.)
Yeah, I guess the equation was misapplied there. The point was that the statistics won't (or might not) chalk the death up to alcohol like they should, which I'd say is a harmfully misleading omission; even if it's not a longevity problem for the drunk driver, it is for the other person.