Police issue tickets more frequently by the beach

Rick Neale of Florida Today analyzed 2004 traffic ticket data from Brevard County, finding that "beachside police ticket at far higher relative frequencies than their mainland counterparts." The county's smaller towns write far more tickets per capita than larger cities. "Melbourne Village issues almost eight times more tickets per capita than Brevard's biggest city, Palm Bay." Police mostly blame tourist traffic on State Road A1A and commuters seeking alternate routes.

Matthew Junker of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review used arrest data from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts to determine that fully 56 percent of the people arrested last year were in the most intoxicated category under Pennsylvania's .08 DUI law. "Statistics for the law's first 11 months -- from Feb. 1, 2004, to the end of that year -- show that more than half of those charged with drunken driving had a blood-alcohol content of 0.16 percent or higher, twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent."

Sewell Chan and Jo Craven McGinty of The New York Times studied delays on New York's subway system, finding that "a typical weekday rider on the subway today is likely to experience a train delay roughly once every three weeks, compared with about once every five weeks in September 2003, when the number of stalled trains reached a record low." The delays - defined as being at least five minutes late at the end of a run - occur for a wide variety of reasons, including worker error or signal malfunction. Passengers who hold doors open also contribute to the lateness.

Gregory Korte of The Cincinnati Enquirer analyzed nearly 100,000 parking tickets issued in Cincinnati last year, finding that "Kentucky violators rarely pay anything at all, because the office responsible for collecting fines doesn't trace out-of-state license plates. That resulted in an out-of-state collection rate of just 2.5 percent, compared to 87.9 percent overall." Fines for parking infractions increased in 2005.

Jayne O'Donnell from USA Today investigated teenage driving accidents across the United States and found an alarming trend. Nearly three-fourths of teenage accidents occurred when males were behind the wheel with 16-year-olds being the riskiest of them all. "Their rate of involvement in fatal crashes was nearly five times that of drivers ages 20 and older, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety." States with restrictive licenses saw a significant decrease in teenage fatalities once the restriction was in place. "Seven states and the District of Columbia don't give unrestricted licenses to anyone under 18."

Scott Dodd, Bruce Henderson and Heather Vogell of The Charlotte Observer examine railroad safety, finding that "in the Charlotte region, nearly 800,000 people live within a mile of a major rail line," an increase of 90,000 in the past 10 years. "Yet emergency planners don't know how much hazardous material passes daily through uptown Charlotte and the region's small towns. Federal, state and local agencies told the Observer they don't keep track, and the railroads won't provide that information for security reasons." Nearly 400 schools are located within a mile of train routes, and thus within the evacuation zone for accidents involving chemical materials.

Leon Fooksman, John Maines and Chris Kahn of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel used state and federal data to show that "in Florida, the rate of car crashes for drivers between ages 15 and 19 dropped 23 percent from 1996 to 2003, the last year of available statistics. The crash rate has declined for everyone, but it's down twice as much for teens as any other age group." While fatal accidents involving teenage drivers grab headlines, young drivers in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties all had fewer accidents during the seven years studied.