Monday, Jul. 11, 1977

Suicide by Auto

At 70 miles an hour, a lone driver smashes his car into a tree and dies in the wreckage. A highway cop notes the dry, straight road and lack of skid marks, then lists the cause of death as "improper driving." But behavioral scientists--as well as police--have long theorized that many such otherwise inexplicable crashes are actually disguised suicides.

Though circumstantial evidence is strong, proving that autocide actually does occur has been difficult. Now, in Science magazine, Sociologist David Phillips, 33, of the University of California, San Diego, has offered the most solid evidence yet that a number of suicides deliberately drive to their deaths in the family car.

Phillips' study stemmed from a paper he had published in 1974 arguing that some suicides were clearly imitative: in the weeks following a prominent suicide, the number of ordinary Americans taking their own lives rises. Phillips later reasoned that if the automobile was a suicide weapon, traffic deaths should increase after widely reported suicides. He analyzed California traffic fatalities from 1966 to 1973, comparing figures for ordinary weeks with statistics for weeks following suicides that were highly publicized in the state, including those of Playwright William Inge, Japanese Novelist Yukio Mishima and California Wine Maker A. Korbel. Phillips' finding: on the third day after such a suicide, auto fatalities rose by 30%; they leveled off for the week at 9% above normal. "In general," notes Phillips, "the more publicity given to the suicide story, the more the number of auto fatalities rises."

One subject Phillips feels should be explored is "what precisely are the psychological and sociological mechanisms that seem to be operating" when someone decides to commit autocide. The search could produce some worthwhile results. Except for the Depression year of 1932, the current suicide rate in the U.S. is the highest in history.

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