The explanation is actually very much simpler and very much more down to earth.
Its not *luck* as such. It is simply that many of these "Dangerous behaviours" are, in fact, a lot less dangerous than the safety campaigners make them out to be.
Even members of this board (who are mostly sceptical to the “speed kills” message) are still vulnerable to this propaganda.
We are continually bombarded by stats that claim that tailgating makes you “X” times more likely to have an accident, Talking and driving makes you “Y” times more likely to have an accident and even “Drinking and driving makes you “Z” times more likely to have an accident
(Having less than six hours sleep, not eating your greens, having an R in your name, and so on! You can always bring up weird correlations when you are looking at the statistics of extremely rare events
)
The point is however that the basic risk of having an accident on any given journey is
so low that even if you factor in these “Risky” behaviours, the chances of any individual having an accident as a consequence are still vanishingly small.
Foe example. “Being twice the legal limit for alcohol makes me “N” times more likely to have a fatal accident”
Yea, but “N” times what?
The basic risk of having a fatal is actually such a small number that I could (on probability) drive home bladdererd every night for about 2000 years before I actually killed someone by doing so!
(Oh and BTW, even when I did so, the "victim" in this case would most likly be me! Id have to drive for 5-6000 years before I killed an innocent bystander)