Academic

ANALYST: TSA methods ?will kill more Americans on highway.? As the nation readies for one of the?

By Glenn Reynolds

ANALYST: TSA methods ‘will kill more Americans on highway.’

As the nation readies for one of the busiest traveling holidays, Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, told The Hill that the probable spike in road travel, caused by adverse feelings towards the Transportation Security Administration?s (TSA) new screening procedures, could also lead to more car-related deaths.

?Driving is much more dangerous than flying, as you are far more likely to be killed in an automobile accident mile-for-mile than you are in an airplane,? said Horwitz. ?The result will be that the new TSA procedures will kill more Americans on the highway.?

This seems plausible to me. Of course, a few thousand extra highway deaths don’t produce the national trauma of a 9/11, and that’s a reasonable thing to factor in somehow.

UPDATE: Moe Lane: “It?s the qualitative difference between ?tragedy? and ?atrocity,? Glenn.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on November 21, 2010 (boomark / email).