Medicine: Death in Manhattan

Ever since Freudian patter became the common currency of the cocktail hour, the idea has been spreading that people who have accidents are "accident-prone." But for a massive group of accident victims—the 8,000 U.S. pedestrians killed each year by motor vehicles—there is no clear medical evidence one way or the other. Last week an American College of Surgeons meeting in Boston learned the results of an intensive and ingenious study that enlisted experts from the New York State Department of Health and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Cornell University Medical College, the office...