Why blaming the driver misleads us. When you find repeated fatal events at a certain spot under similar circumstances, it’s hard to claim that it was all the fault of the driver. If it were solely the driver’s fault, the events would be randomly dispersed along the length of the roadway. A cluster indicates that there is some underlying reason for the injury event. A statement such as, "Another damn drunk driver crashed into that tree out on deadman’s curve", misses the point that, drunk or not, if there was no tree to crash into, there would be no fatalities. This is why we should try to avoid dismissing fatal injury events by placing blame on the injured and the responsible parties.

Removing a hazard at a cluster site protects everyone, day and night, in all weather, drunk or sober, automatically. In this way, it is much more effective than trying to get all the drunk drivers off the road. A hazard that collects drunk drivers will occasionally get a sober one as well. Although drunk driving is a crime and stupid as well, the offender should not suffer death as a result of their stupidity when it is preventable. (Thanks to Leon Robertson for arguing this point with me back in 1983 during the Indian Health Service-Injury Prevention Specialist course) For more information on this, see the case study on the Death of Lady Diana Spencer in Appendix 1.