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Traffic safety researchers found that during the three months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, shifts from air to automobile travel caused several hundred additional traffic fatalities. Had these shifts continued for more than a year, the additional deaths would have exceeded the Sept. 11 terrorist deaths. Because of actions by governments and the airline industry to increase security, travellers shifted back to air, and these excess deaths were avoided.

Terrorist attacks are intended to be highly visible, producing intense media coverage. As a result they tend to generate exaggerated fear. In most situations, traffic accidents actually represent a far greater risk.

• On an average day, nine people die and more than 800 are injured in British road accidents. The July 7 London terrorist deaths represent about six days of normal traffic fatalities.

• The 191 people killed in March 2004 by bombers in Madrid were equivalent to about 12 or 13 days of normal traffic deaths in Spain.

• During the 25 worst years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, twice as many people died there in road accidents as were killed by terrorists.

• In Israel, the annual road traffic death toll was two or three times higher than civilian deaths by Palestinian terrorists during the violent years of 2000 through 2003.

• The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks killed about the same number of people as a typical month of U.S. traffic accidents. According to official reports, terrorists killed 25 Americans worldwide in 2002, 23 in 2003, and none in 2004, while about 42,000 Americans died in traffic accidents in each of these years.

     .....It is important to avoid overreacting to terrorism in ways that increase overall risks to individuals and society. Transit terrorism would cause greater total casualties and damages if individual travellers respond to exaggerated fears by shifting from public transit to less safe modes, or if governments reduce their support for public transit.

Todd Litman is executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, an independent research organization that specializes in evaluation of transportation benefits and costs. This column summarizes the results of his recent study, Terrorism, Transit and Public Safety: Evaluating the Risks, available at http://www.vtpi.org

Source: 'Terrorism, Transit and Safety' by Todd Litman, in the Toronto Star