My friend Nancy Amons, (WSMV Nashville) who is one of America’s great local news investigative reporters, just landed another strong story that’s worth a look. Nancy searched five years of state accident records to discover the sad story of how many drivers of big trucks are involved in accidents because they fell asleep. Astonishingly, Amons discovered, cops seldom ticketed the drivers. The story said:
How big a problem are sleepy truckers in Tennessee? The I-Team analyzed truck accident reports statewide over the last five years. We found 64 crashes where a trucker who was listed as "apparently asleep" injured or killed someone.
In 70 percent of those cases, the trucker never got a ticket.
Watch the story here.
Nancy tells me some details about how she came up with the data:
We used half a dozen databases to find out how often Tennessee truckers fall asleep at the wheel and kill or injure someone, and what happens when they do.
We used a database of accident reports to find cases where truckers were listed as “apparently asleep” in injury crashes then followed up to see what happened. In 70 percent of the cases, even in cases involving fatalities, the sleepy truckers were never prosecuted or even written a ticket.
Another database of Dept of Safety inspection reports found that in three years, more than 1900 truck drivers were cited for driving over the allowable number of hours. Some drivers had been on the road 15, 17, even 22 hours straight. We calculated the average fine for driving over hours (we used a traffic ticket database for this one) and found that over-hours truckers paid an average fine of $231.
One case we profiled (part one) shows how a trucker who admitted he fell asleep at the wheel slammed into a convenience store, killing a man pumping gas and causing an explosion. The trucker was never prosecuted or ticketed and still has a valid license – which shows no sign of the accident. He could be hired to haul hazardous material tomorrow.
Nancy has this advice for anybody who might consider localizing this idea:
If you want to pursue a local version of the sleepy trucker story, see if your state uses Uniform Traffic Crash Reports. We requested a database from the Tennessee Department of Safety that would include all crashes involving large trucks where there were injuries or fatalities during a five-year period.
There is a section called "Driver Factors" on that report. Police officers can check up to three boxes that describe the "Driver Condition." One of the driver conditions is "apparently asleep." Another is "fatigue." We just used "apparently asleep." We found 64 cases where truck drivers who were apparently asleep had been involved in an injury or fatal crash. There's another field that indicates whether police wrote a citation. That's how we calculated that 70 percent of the time, truckers were never ticketed, even if they killed someone.
There are a lot of databases about truck accidents. I usually recommend using data from NICAR, but its trucking database had only accidents that were reported to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (and not all accidents are). I found that data to be inconsistent when it came to the sections showing if drivers were drowsy. The local data was better.
And, as always, when you get the data, get the paper report. You'll find witness names, diagrams, and other stuff you'll need.
You could also use the "driver condition" field if you are looking for truckers who were drunk or on drugs. Another interesting story might be the number of truckers who have accidents because of the prescription drugs they're on. A new federal study listed that as the number ONE cause of crashes when the truck driver is at fault.
Sending Flowers/Fruit/Notes to a Horse
Yes, nuts nationwide are sending flowers to Barbaro. So many people want to send good wishes to Barbaro that the vet clinic where he is recovering built an online site for you to send him an e-mail. The United States Equestrian Federation also has set up an email account for Barbaro’s trainer and owners. There are more than 260 Barbaro items on eBay right now. Chat groups analyze the injury.
A “Safer” Racetrack
Turfway Park in Kentucky now has a “polytrack” which the track officials say is safer for racehorses. WKRC -TV in Cincinnati has the story.
States Addicted to Gambling
The American fascination with gambling may be softening even though it is more widespread than ever. Only two states, Utah and Hawaii, do not rely on gambling for state income.
Stateline.org says that a new survey by The Pew Research Center says 71 percent of the public approves of state lotteries. In 1989, Gallup found, 78 percent of American approved of lotteries. Pew found that about half of all Americans questioned (51 percent) were in favor of state regulated casino gambling which is about flat, considered the margin of error from the 1989 Gallup survey. (The margin of sampling error for the survey was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.)
Pew found that:
- Two-thirds (67 percent) of adults said they placed a bet of some kind in the past year, down from 71 percent in 1989
- Fewer than 23 percent said they enjoy making bets, down from 34 percent in 1989.
- Seven-in-ten Americans (70 percent) said legalized gambling leads people to wager more than they can afford, compared to 62 percent with that concern in 1989.
Stateline.org reports:
States are more addicted to gambling revenue than ever as the lure of easy new money for schools, tax relief and public services has led to an explosion of state-sanctioned casinos, slot machines at racetracks and lottery games.
Twenty-five years ago, gambling was legal in only three states. Now every state except Utah and Hawaii rely on gambling to generate revenues to help avoid raising taxes.
Pennsylvania will be the 11th state to offer slot machines at racetracks and other venues when it finishes awarding contracts to operate 61,000 slot machines – more than any state but Nevada -- to raise money for property tax relief. North Carolina in March became the 42nd state to launch a lottery and expects to raise $425 million in its first year, mostly for education.
Bets can be placed in nearly 900 casinos – 455 privately run in 11 states, 406 on Indian reservations in 29 states and 29 racetrack casinos – known as racinos -- in 11 states. And at least nine states (Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas) are considering opening their doors to casino or racetrack gambling.
The economic downturn early this decade was horrific for state budgets but helped push gambling into a mainstream form of entertainment. Gambling now attracts more than twice as many dollars as Americans spend on movie tickets, CDs, sporting events and concerts, according to the CNHI News Service (Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.). Gaming generates more than $20 billion a year in taxes and lottery revenues for state budgets, according to industry estimates that don’t include fees from Native American-run casinos.
Thursday is Missing Children Day
Al’s Morning Meeting reader Cheryl Hosmer, a nonfiction book editor in Redford, Mi., reminds me that Thursday, May 25th is National Missing Children’s Day. It is actually the anniversary of the disappearance of a little boy in New York City.
What cases still haunt local police? The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provides some resources to help you figure out how many children are missing in the United States.
To date two such studies have been completed. The first National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART-1) was released in 1990, and the second, known as NISMART-2, was released in October 2002. According to NISMART-2 research, which studied the year 1999, an estimated 797,500 children were reported missing; 58,200 children were abducted by nonfamily members; 115 children were the victims of the most serious, long-term nonfamily abductions called "stereotypical kidnappings"; and 203,900 children were the victims of family abductions.
REFERENCE: For more information on missing children abduction estimates and the NISMART studies, please read:
NISMART-2, October 2002. National Estimates of Missing Children: An Overview Adobe PDF
NISMART-2, October 2002. Nonfamily Abducted Children: National Estimates and Characteristics Adobe PDF
NISMART-2, October 2002. Children Abducted by Family Members: National Estimates and Characteristics Adobe PDF
NISMART-2, October 2002. Runaway/Thrownaway Children: National Estimates and Characteristics Adobe PDF
NISMART-2, October 2002. NISMART Questions and Answers Adobe PDF
Going to the Movies—At Home
This is a sign of the times. A Pew Research project says the number one way of “going to the movies” is by staying home. The report says:
Three-quarters of all adults say they would prefer watching movies at home rather than in a theater, according to a Pew Research Center survey, up from 67 percent in 1994.
The survey finds that more than seven-in-ten adults (71 percent) watch at least one movie a week, but the great bulk of this viewing occurs at home rather than in a theater.
While the most popular way to watch movies at home is on broadcast, cable or satellite television programming, fully half of the public says that at least once a week they a watch a movie on a DVD or by pay-per-view.
Viewing movies at home in this manner - which, like theater-going, requires consumers to pay for each movie they see - is roughly five times more prevalent than going out to the movies in a theater, the Pew survey finds.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected. I found your comment about "nuts nationwide" sending Barbaro and...
