Newspaper fails

Bee

So the campus newspaper is running a segment on plainclothes traffic cops stepping up to sting people who don't stop at crosswalks.  Okay, whatever.  But...

pedestrian fatalities account for up to 15 percent of all the car crashes in the state of Oregon, and for every pedestrian who is killed in a car crash, another 20 are injured.

At least it's good to know non-pedestrian-related car accidents are at an all-time low of negative 65 percent of all crashes.

ClockworkUniverse

It's possible that some crashes involve more than one pedestrian :P

Bee

I guess I could see someone hitting drunk frat party crowds or something, but I somehow doubt it's enough to offset things by almost an entire order of magnitude.

glennmagusharvey

I'm not seeing the math here either.  The numbers seem to make sense:

1. 15% of car crashes in Oregon result in a pedestrian fatality.

2. There are twenty times as many...wait a minute, I think I know what you're reading here.

You're saying that, assuming that each crash that results in a pedestrian fataility results in only one pedestrian fatality, that means that for every 100 car crashes in Oregon, there are 15 fatalities and 300 non-fatally-injured pedestrians.

I still don't see the -65% though.

ClockworkUniverse

Wait, nevermind.

Bee

My hand-wavey I'm-being-a-jackass-and-don't-actually-give-a-shit math failed because I added 150% instead of 300% for the additional 20 injuries per fatality, for one.  Sue me. (Though it is amusing to see my error actually made it look less ridiculous.)

But basically yeah, either car crashes typically hit very large crowds of pedestrians, or someone in the editor's room failed at their napkin math even worse than I did.

Alkthash

Or there are a lot of nonlethal car accidents.

lrdgck

I know of a case where a commenter on a newspaper's website tricked the journalist into believing he's a reliable witness of the event that he commented on (I hope I make it clear enough), and after the journalist published another article where he referenced that guy's "account", the latter made it public that not only he fed him bullshit, but also that he - random internet persona - wasn't even checked in any way as a source. The reaction? The journalist wrote the third article, in which he called it an attack on the free press or some other shit.

And before you jump to conclusions: the newspaper in question is no crazy fundie (like Spanish, I am told) fascist (like Hungary, I am told) shit (that leaves British as the crazy, heh heh). It's "Gazeta Wyborcza", internationally respected country's biggest newspaper, run by likewise internationally respected people with many high-ranking and respected friends locally and internationally, and held as the heavyweight of local liberal Left. 

Bee

Or there are a lot of nonlethal car accidents.

It was all reported by proportion.  If pedestrians are killed in 15% of all crashes, and they're injured 20 times as often out of presumably the same pool of accidents...yeah.

Stormtroper

^^^ According to the article, 85% of these car accidents are non-lethal (for pedestrians, anyway). Assuming one pedestrian victim per accident, at least 95.24% of car accidents must have no pedestrian fatalities (at that percentage, pedestrians are involved in every car accident).

 

Only assuming one fatality per accident at most instead, car accidents (including those without pedestrian victims and those with pedestrian fatalities) must average three non-lethal pedestrian victims per accident.

Bee

I prefer to go with the explanation that there was no math involved, but they just posted the most eye-catching stats from two completely unrelated studies, and didn't bother making sure they were consistent with each other.

glennmagusharvey

That's still a pretty high number of average pedestrian hits.