Santa and the Christmas Road Toll

In the absence of much real news in the Christmas-New Year period, the road toll features heavily on the nightly news update.

For the record the holiday 'toll' (Dec 20 to Jan 2) was 56 nationwide and 13 in Queensland. Whilst tragic for the people involved, and their nearest and dearest, it's nothing out of the ordinary.

In 2007 (i can't find full 2008 stats yet) the number of people who lost their life on Australian roads was 1616. In Queensland, 360. While it may seem gruesome to do maths on these numbers, please bear with me.

For Australia
Year-long average = 1616/365 = 4.43 per day
Christmas/NY average = 56/14 = 4.00 per day

For Queensland
Year-long average = 360/365 = 0.986 per day
Christmas/NY average = 13/14 = 0.929 per day

In short, the "Christmas" road toll (and the underlying message that driving is safe at other times) seems to be a Santa for adults. Nice fantasy - but not actually true.