Somebody's been on the altar wine...

[alice]

Well, the Northern Territory is in a class by itself...you could probably drive blindfolded for 100mi and not run the risk of hitting anything else.

It cetainly is a 'class by itself', and that's not just because of the roads!!

As for the roads, I tend to agree to a point, however outback NT has bad roads, road trains, buffalos and other strays and miscellaneous wildlife, broken down cars left at the side of the road, regular flooding of road crossings ... and also road fatigue which is caused by driving very very long distances with not much around to keep the driver alert.

But NT did try to argue to the Fed Govt that there was no need for the same restrictions as elsewhere - the fed Govt decided otherwise.

[alice]

Presumably a peer reviewed study would have controlled for as many of those other factors as possible.

That doesn't always happen. people like Ben Goldacre and Dr Stephen Barrett have made entire careers out of showing how often studies, even peer reviewed, are often tailored or too narrowly focussed. Of course, they weren't addressing the aclohol/driving statistics, but I believe the point would be the same.

The quote Rubarto provided was from an article which, by it's title, was 'Alcohol-related relative risk of fatal driver injuries in relation to driver age and sex', so it was the relative risk taking into account the driver age and sex. I would hope that in that study they focussed equally on all the relevant factors and on the variables within those factors. However it was published in 'Journal of Studies on Alcohol' and was specifically targeting alcohol - as, again, per the title. So it may have been more focussed on that and may not have fully accounted for other variables. I haven't read the article, and would be interested in an informed and unbiased summary by someone who did have the time to read it.

[rubato]

This area has been well-studied for a very long time now.

yrs,
rubato