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Relationship Between Smoking and Motor Vehicle Death Rates in the U.S.

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Abstract

Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States. Further, cigarette smoking is associated with negative health and work outcomes. However, scant research on data for the United States has analyzed the association between cigarette smoking rates and motor vehicle death rates. This study fills that void. It estimates the association via ordinary least squares regression on annual state-level data for 2011–2019, controlling for other known factors related to motor vehicle death rates and accounting for year and region fixed effects. Results indicate that the cigarette smoking rates of a state’s population are significantly and directly related to the motor vehicle fatality rates in that state. Further, interaction results indicate that alcohol consumption’s positive association with motor vehicle fatalities is highest in states with more smokers. The findings suggest that smokers may be more likely to die in motor vehicle crashes than non-smokers, and that driver safety programs targeting smokers warrant funding.

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Notes

  1. There is one missing observation; New Jersey did not have a value for the smoking variable in 2019.

  2. The most recent year for which cell phone subscriptions by state were available from the FCC (2013) is 2011, and values for the years 2012–2019 were approximated as follows: (i) Each state’s subscription share was calculated for 2011 by the ratio of state subscriptions to national subscriptions. (ii) This state share was assumed for the following eight years and multiplied by national subscriptions for the eight years, as reported by The World Bank (2022). The simple correlation coefficient between actual 2010 state subscriptions from the FCC (2013) and estimated 2010 state subscriptions based on the 2022 state shares was 0.9994, which gives us confidence in the estimation.

  3. In this study, a state to U.S. vehicle age ratio was calculated using 2016 state by state vehicle age information (NADA, 2016) and the overall U.S. vehicle age (BTS, 2022). Each state’s ratio was then multiplied by the U.S. vehicle age for 2011–2019 to approximate the state’s annual vehicle age.

  4. A BTS (2011) report contained state speed limits as of 2010. Current state maximum speed limits were gathered from the IIHS (2022) as of January 2022. Where these values were equal, a constant maximum speed limit was used from 2011 to 2019. If the 2010 and 2022 maximum speed limits were different, news stories of when the speed limit changed were found and used to adjust the speed limit variable.

  5. The nine census divisions are: New England, Middle Atlantic, East North Central, West North Central, South Atlantic, East South Central, West South Central, Mountain, and Pacific.

  6. The first partial derivative of Model 1 with respect to cell phone evaluated at the mean cell phone subscription rate is negative, and the second partial derivative is positive.

  7. The correlation between Cell Phone and Cell Phone2 is 0.97, between Cell Phone and Cell Phone3 is 0.92 and between Cell Phone2 and Cell Phone3 is 0.98.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Finance, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Mary J. Becker

  2. Department of Economics and Finance, John Carroll University, University Heights, OH, USA

    Thomas J. Zlatoper

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  1. Mary J. Becker
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  2. Thomas J. Zlatoper
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Correspondence to Thomas J. Zlatoper.

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Becker, M.J., Zlatoper, T.J. Relationship Between Smoking and Motor Vehicle Death Rates in the U.S.. Atl Econ J 50, 53–65 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11293-022-09746-5

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