Thursday, April 29, 2004

Drudge Abuse

Drudge gets a ton of traffic through his site, and for someone who supposedly has an eye for peeking around corners, to see the real story, he posts some misleading headlines.  Case in point in this headline link this morning.

“43,220 Road Deaths in ‘03; 13-Year High; SUVs Cited..."

The actual article headline.

“Highway Deaths Hit 13-Year High in 2003."

Here’s the SUV citation from the article Drudge links to.

"It was the fifth straight year road deaths rose, although passenger car fatalities decreased. Sport utility vehicle deaths went up roughly 10 percent over 2002, with more than half of the victims in those crashes killed in rollovers. Motorcycle deaths also jumped."

Which is followed later in the article by this statement.

"Sport utility deaths went up by 456 with more than two- thirds of victims not wearing seat belts, the safety agency said."

The actual culprit for the increase in deaths, as reported within the same article.

"In 2003, more than half of those killed in passenger vehicles were not wearing safety belts. Forty percent of all fatalities, or 17,401 deaths, were alcohol-related, essentially unchanged from 2002."

Neither of the above culprits, seatbelt use or drunks who drive, are effected by increasing the number of laws which supposedly will protect us.  It ain’t the SUV’s which are the problem.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/29 at 03:35 AM
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