This article on Super Bowl Crashes is a great read. Here's part of it. More at the link.
The Super Bowl, professional football's championship, is one of the most popular events in the world. Typically, the game has a television viewing audience in the United States alone of more than 130 million people.
At the same time, motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause of death around the world. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.2 million people are killed on the road every year and as many as 50 million more are injured. If present trends continue, the number of people killed and injured on the world's roads will rise by more than 60 per cent between 2000 and 2020.
Is there a link between Super Bowl telecasts and fatal car crashes? Do fatal crashes increase immediately following a telecast? These are the questions that medical researchers Donald A. Redelmeier and Craig L. Stewart of the University of Toronto address in the current issue of Chance.
"The prototypical audience member for the Super Bowl is a young adult in good health, the same type of person who does not seek safety advice yet is overrepresented in fatal crashes," Redelmeier and Stewart write. "We wondered whether the Super Bowl telecast might thereby provide fresh insights into both motor vehicle crashes and major television broadcasts."
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