Climate change – not increased use of cell phones – might be to blame for an unusual spike in road deaths that hit the United States two years ago, said a study published on Thursday.
The study said people might have used their vehicles more frequently to avoid increasingly bad weather – rising temperatures and heavier rainfall – resulting in an increased number of deaths on the road.
The finding challenges a widespread notion that 2015’s hike was the result of increased cell-phone usage by motorists.
It is interesting though. Better cars than ever and more traffic accidents. It could be distracted driving courtesy of technology.
But it makes me wonder. T. gondii infection increases the number of traffic accidents people have, presumably because the cysts set up shop in the amygdala, and degrade its function. Since driving is amygdala-intensive, what with prioritization and threat recognition, degrading amygdala function will increase traffic accidents.
Of course, a degraded amygdala function will also have you watching a streaming video on your smartphone when you should be watching the road too, because the amygdala is supposed to give you stress when you set yourself up to drive into the back of a stopped tractor trailer at 60 mph. So the same thing that would tell you importing third-world Muslims in record numbers is bad, is the same thing that prevents traffic accidents.
So all of that raises the question, is amygdala function at an all time low now due to the ease and safety of r-selection? If it was at an all time low, would you expect more or fewer traffic fatalities? Might they be related?
I’d love to see traffic fatalities laid out as related to political orientation of the area, though it would be difficult to tease out how much was due to city-level traffic density vs rural level density.
I will say, the fact that the defect that produces our ideological opposition increases mortality is a huge political advantage. All we need is more mortality, and more Darwinian Selection, and we will win. And the world is designed to give us that, all my itself.
Spread r/K Theory, because the rabbits are not all there, literally
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