Alcohol-impaired driving fatalities

As Japan's population has declined, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities in the US have increased, a correlation that stretches across the Pacific to connect Japanese demographics with American road safety in a way that neither country would endorse. The coefficient is -0.891 across nine years, suggesting that every person Japan does not produce, America compensates for with an impaired driver. This is not how either population dynamics or blood alcohol levels work, but the chart is unmoved by such objections.

Japan's population has been declining since about 2010, losing roughly 500,000 people per year due to ultra-low birth rates and minimal immigration. US alcohol-impaired driving fatalities grew from about 9,900 in 2014 to over 13,300 by 2022, reversing years of progress as pandemic-era behaviors (heavier drinking, emptier roads encouraging faster driving) persisted even after lockdowns ended. The negative correlation is a pure artifact of timing: one metric declining steadily while the other rises steadily across the same nine-year window. Japan's demographic crisis and America's drunk driving problem share nothing except the 2010s.

Nine years of Japan shrinking and drunk driving deaths growing is a correlation that spans an ocean and means nothing on either shore. Japan's population declines because its young people are choosing not to have children. America's impaired driving deaths rise because its adults are choosing to drink and drive. Both are choices. Neither is connected to the other.