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I think this serves as a great lesson in statistics being converted into news stories. The roads are safer. The roads are deadlier. Both are true and both ar

I think this serves as a great lesson in statistics being converted into news stories. The roads are safer. The roads are deadlier. Both are true and both are false depending upon if you are looking at the total or the per driver (and perhaps even if you are looking at per driver per minute or per driver per mile).

brenden2 6y ago
That's why everyone need to learn to separate fact and opinions. Ignore the conclusions, instead look at the data. Critical thinking skills are in short supply. The news is pretty bad in that it's mostly opinions pretending to be facts/information, with occasional data sprinkled in to support their conclusions.
- yazboo 6y ago
  But isn't the issue here that both points of view are fact/information-based?
  - brenden2 6y ago
    Yes, but what people pay attention to are the conclusions, not the facts.
    - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      But those are both facts - less people are driving, but if you do drive you're more likely to be in an accident. Are those conclusions? Would a presentation of facts just be the data itself?
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        Are you more likely to be in an accident? Or are you more likely to be in an accident with a fatality? It seems like heavy rush-hour traffic is prone to creating a large number of accidents with a low total number of fatalities. When I drive around now, I believe the risk of accident per mile is significantly lower (city dweller used to typically packed city roads), but due to higher speeds, I can’t make the same claim about lower fatality risk.
  - kungato 6y ago
    Maybe there are not 2 points of view but 1 nuanced
  - Sharlin 6y ago
    Lies, damned lies, and statistics [1]. You can cherry-pick a piece of stats to support any opinion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist...
  - pchristensen 6y ago
    “Safer” is an opinion or analysis. “There are fewer fatal car accidents overall” and “There are more Fatal accidents per mile driven.” are facts.
- kryogen1c 6y ago
  > look at the data. Critical thinking oh no! why are you getting downvoted?! ive been banging on about the subjective nature of "facts" on HN for a while now. perhaps a parable from the movie Charlie Wilson's War will help: A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how wonderful.” But a Zen master who lives in the village says, “We'll see.” The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how awful.” The Zen master says, “We'll see.” The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go to war. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, “Oh, how wonderful.” The Zen master says, “We'll see.”
- groestl 6y ago
  > Ignore the conclusions, instead look at the data. Also, do not ignore the opinion, instead look for it specifically, and assume that the data has been curated to support that opinion. Then go find the gaps.
- newacct583 6y ago
  I'm sorry, there is no opinion in either headline. Both are correct, newsworthy and correctly presented. Here are the relevant headlines: "Stay-at-Home Rules Reduce Fatal Collisions" Fact. Not opinion. Correct. And important to know, because it's good that fewer people are dying. "Emptier US roads more lethal" Likewise a correct fact and not an opinion. And newsworthy because driving right now is more likely to get me killed, and that's something I'd like to know. And the media got it right, in the headline even. It's posters here that are trying to conflate the two and make them seem like they say opposite things when they clearly did not. So... which party is the one injecting opinion? It doesn't seem like the media to me. This seems like a bunch of HN commenters trying to spin up a controversy.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > "Emptier US roads more lethal" > Likewise a correct fact and not an opinion. And newsworthy because driving right now is more likely to get me killed, and that's something I'd like to know. "lethal" here means more deaths per mile traveled. that might be because roads everywhere are less safe, or it might mean that a greater fraction of total miles are being driven on inherently unsafe stretches of road (with the same local fatality rates as before the crisis). fatalities include pedestrian deaths as well. maybe there is increased risk for pedestrians but not for drivers. the article doesn't say. there's certainly not enough information to say whether you personally are at greater risk driving.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      Uh... the detail you're asking for is literally in the text of the article. I still don't understand why you don't think that headline is an accurate summary. And in any case... I don't understand your criticism at all. If there are more deaths per mile traveled, then every mile driven is on average "more lethal", by definition. So if I drive to the same place I (in the sense of an average "I" across all drivers) am more likely to die. QED. Basically, you're just criticizing grammar by conflating my use of "I" with me personally and not the abstract reader I clearly intended. Do you make similar quibbles about the abstract use of "you" or "one", or the royal "we"?
ageitgey 6y ago
I think the biggest problem with the modern media is that all stories are reported at "equal volume." Any tidbit the media has to fill time is headlined as if it were the most important thing currently happening in the world. There's no moderation of tone or consideration for reporting an accurate overall view of the world. It's both interesting that traffic deaths are down overall and that deaths are up per mile traveled. But I would argue that they are not anywhere near equally important news. The total lowering of traffic deaths is news. The increase in deaths per mile is an interesting bit of trivia relevant to few people and should be reported as such. This has been especially bad with something as nuanced and data-driven as COVID. Any new number or stat gets a headline even if it has zero meaning in the grand scheme of things. I've seen news sites with two stories on the same page simultaneously proclaiming that there's no evidence that there is immunity to COVID while also proclaiming that a vaccine trial was successful.
- aasasd 6y ago
  > all stories are reported at "equal volume" Coincidentally, that's where oldschool print media was better, if only due to space being limited and budgeted. Computers, otoh, are only good at dealing with things that are all alike. But also because articles were all laid out right there on the pages next to each other and could be compared in physical terms.
daveFNbuck 6y ago
"The roads are safer" is not true. It's more dangerous to drive right now. There is no sense in either of these stories which it's safer to be on the roads. Something like "the roads are killing fewer drivers" would be true.
- xwdv 6y ago
  Roads don’t kill drivers. The roads are exactly the same. Drivers kill drivers. There are more dangerous drives on the streets with empty roads.
  - daveFNbuck 6y ago
    The drivers aren't necessarily more dangerous. They might just be driving more dangerously with less traffic. It's easier to die going 80 on the freeway than if you're stuck in gridlock. I think we can at least agree that the statement "the roads are safer" is false.
    - annot888888 6y ago
      Rush hour isn’t gridlock everywhere Plenty of places are increased traffic but not bumper to bumper This is all rounding numbers that have been rounded already to smooth out uniqueness of a given locale Water is wet level conclusion that using math correctly by math rules to debate a topic that’s locally unique and out of view for people in far flung regions. My individual odds of dying in an accident haven’t changed much. Safer or worse in some aggregate measure isn’t that useful to me today or tomorrow. Still gonna do as I do.
  - robbrown451 6y ago
    In this usage, "road" means more than the asphalt. It includes the cars on it as well as objects that could be crashed into, such as light posts, nearby trees, etc. If it is a road without a guardrail next to a cliff, it includes the ground at the bottom of cliff, since that is probably what's going to kill you, not the road itself. You could express it in a way that would be correct to all the pedants out there, but it might be a long convoluted sentence.
MR4D 6y ago
This is a great point. A better title would have been something like "Traffic fatalities in March drop to ####". When I was in school, our statistics prof used to put up that daily chart on the bottom of the USA Today front page. He wouldn't start class until we found two or three things wrong with it. By the end of the semester, nobody in the class trusted anything from that newspaper. Great learning experience!
- munk-a 6y ago
  Talking about terrible statistical presentation - I don't know if you saw this graph[1] that Georgia published displaying corona virus impact but if not... there is something a bit off with it. 1. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/05/19/18/28584104-8336989-image-a-2_1589908458740.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/05/19/18/28584104-8336989-...
  - brewdad 6y ago
    That one is so bad and so obvious to anyone who takes the time to actually read the labels that it feels like a case of malicious compliance. A boss needed a chart to support a falling case count and someone made him a visually appealing one while also showing the trend is BS.
    - joshuahedlund 6y ago
      As someone who has been watching GA's charts closely over the last few weeks, I actually disagree in this case. It was one chart of several on the page, and not even the most prominent[0], the other charts were still in the right order, and this chart still showed an overall downward trend even put in the correct order. As someone who has dealt with coding lots of data into charts and making frequent changes to them and seen how bugs easily sneak in, I find mistake more likely than malice. [0]https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report
- shanecleveland 6y ago
  How is the current title misleading? Organ transplants down: Fact. Number of fatalities down: Fact.
rewoi 6y ago
It is just clickbait. People who do not get organs, die in hospitals, not in cars. With that logic person would be a murder, for refusing to "donate" their organs.
Ericson2314 6y ago
FTFY: The roads are safer, the moving vehicles are more dangerous
BurningFrog 6y ago
"Things are pretty OK" will never be a news story. Media will publish "The roads are deadlier", or, if they're unusually responsible, nothing. Remember this when "the news brings you down". They only publish those stories! Not because they're evil, but because those are the one's we'll click on. Just don't think the news is a representative sample of what happens.
fastball 6y ago
This is why I don't read the news anymore.
three_seagrass 6y ago
It's also a lesson in rates vs. absolute numbers in reporting.
shanecleveland 6y ago
The story doesn't state that roads are safer. It says total fatalities are down, thereby increase donor wait times.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Same with COVID. It is quite deadly. But more information is needed to asses risk, e.g. >90% of deaths are to those with preexisting conditions.

brenden2 6y ago

That's why everyone need to learn to separate fact and opinions. Ignore the conclusions, instead look at the data. Critical thinking skills are in short supply. The news is pretty bad in that it's mostly opinions pretending to be facts/information, with occasional data sprinkled in to support their conclusions.

yazboo 6y ago
But isn't the issue here that both points of view are fact/information-based?
- brenden2 6y ago
  Yes, but what people pay attention to are the conclusions, not the facts.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    But those are both facts - less people are driving, but if you do drive you're more likely to be in an accident. Are those conclusions? Would a presentation of facts just be the data itself?
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Are you more likely to be in an accident? Or are you more likely to be in an accident with a fatality? It seems like heavy rush-hour traffic is prone to creating a large number of accidents with a low total number of fatalities. When I drive around now, I believe the risk of accident per mile is significantly lower (city dweller used to typically packed city roads), but due to higher speeds, I can’t make the same claim about lower fatality risk.
- kungato 6y ago
  Maybe there are not 2 points of view but 1 nuanced
- Sharlin 6y ago
  Lies, damned lies, and statistics [1]. You can cherry-pick a piece of stats to support any opinion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist...
- pchristensen 6y ago
  “Safer” is an opinion or analysis. “There are fewer fatal car accidents overall” and “There are more Fatal accidents per mile driven.” are facts.
kryogen1c 6y ago
> look at the data. Critical thinking oh no! why are you getting downvoted?! ive been banging on about the subjective nature of "facts" on HN for a while now. perhaps a parable from the movie Charlie Wilson's War will help: A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how wonderful.” But a Zen master who lives in the village says, “We'll see.” The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how awful.” The Zen master says, “We'll see.” The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go to war. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, “Oh, how wonderful.” The Zen master says, “We'll see.”
groestl 6y ago
> Ignore the conclusions, instead look at the data. Also, do not ignore the opinion, instead look for it specifically, and assume that the data has been curated to support that opinion. Then go find the gaps.
newacct583 6y ago
I'm sorry, there is no opinion in either headline. Both are correct, newsworthy and correctly presented. Here are the relevant headlines: "Stay-at-Home Rules Reduce Fatal Collisions" Fact. Not opinion. Correct. And important to know, because it's good that fewer people are dying. "Emptier US roads more lethal" Likewise a correct fact and not an opinion. And newsworthy because driving right now is more likely to get me killed, and that's something I'd like to know. And the media got it right, in the headline even. It's posters here that are trying to conflate the two and make them seem like they say opposite things when they clearly did not. So... which party is the one injecting opinion? It doesn't seem like the media to me. This seems like a bunch of HN commenters trying to spin up a controversy.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > "Emptier US roads more lethal" > Likewise a correct fact and not an opinion. And newsworthy because driving right now is more likely to get me killed, and that's something I'd like to know. "lethal" here means more deaths per mile traveled. that might be because roads everywhere are less safe, or it might mean that a greater fraction of total miles are being driven on inherently unsafe stretches of road (with the same local fatality rates as before the crisis). fatalities include pedestrian deaths as well. maybe there is increased risk for pedestrians but not for drivers. the article doesn't say. there's certainly not enough information to say whether you personally are at greater risk driving.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Uh... the detail you're asking for is literally in the text of the article. I still don't understand why you don't think that headline is an accurate summary. And in any case... I don't understand your criticism at all. If there are more deaths per mile traveled, then every mile driven is on average "more lethal", by definition. So if I drive to the same place I (in the sense of an average "I" across all drivers) am more likely to die. QED. Basically, you're just criticizing grammar by conflating my use of "I" with me personally and not the abstract reader I clearly intended. Do you make similar quibbles about the abstract use of "you" or "one", or the royal "we"?

ageitgey 6y ago

I think the biggest problem with the modern media is that all stories are reported at "equal volume." Any tidbit the media has to fill time is headlined as if it were the most important thing currently happening in the world. There's no moderation of tone or consideration for reporting an accurate overall view of the world. It's both interesting that traffic deaths are down overall and that deaths are up per mile traveled. But I would argue that they are not anywhere near equally important news. The total lowering of traffic deaths is news. The increase in deaths per mile is an interesting bit of trivia relevant to few people and should be reported as such. This has been especially bad with something as nuanced and data-driven as COVID. Any new number or stat gets a headline even if it has zero meaning in the grand scheme of things. I've seen news sites with two stories on the same page simultaneously proclaiming that there's no evidence that there is immunity to COVID while also proclaiming that a vaccine trial was successful.

aasasd 6y ago
> all stories are reported at "equal volume" Coincidentally, that's where oldschool print media was better, if only due to space being limited and budgeted. Computers, otoh, are only good at dealing with things that are all alike. But also because articles were all laid out right there on the pages next to each other and could be compared in physical terms.

daveFNbuck 6y ago

"The roads are safer" is not true. It's more dangerous to drive right now. There is no sense in either of these stories which it's safer to be on the roads. Something like "the roads are killing fewer drivers" would be true.

xwdv 6y ago
Roads don’t kill drivers. The roads are exactly the same. Drivers kill drivers. There are more dangerous drives on the streets with empty roads.
- daveFNbuck 6y ago
  The drivers aren't necessarily more dangerous. They might just be driving more dangerously with less traffic. It's easier to die going 80 on the freeway than if you're stuck in gridlock. I think we can at least agree that the statement "the roads are safer" is false.
  - annot888888 6y ago
    Rush hour isn’t gridlock everywhere Plenty of places are increased traffic but not bumper to bumper This is all rounding numbers that have been rounded already to smooth out uniqueness of a given locale Water is wet level conclusion that using math correctly by math rules to debate a topic that’s locally unique and out of view for people in far flung regions. My individual odds of dying in an accident haven’t changed much. Safer or worse in some aggregate measure isn’t that useful to me today or tomorrow. Still gonna do as I do.
- robbrown451 6y ago
  In this usage, "road" means more than the asphalt. It includes the cars on it as well as objects that could be crashed into, such as light posts, nearby trees, etc. If it is a road without a guardrail next to a cliff, it includes the ground at the bottom of cliff, since that is probably what's going to kill you, not the road itself. You could express it in a way that would be correct to all the pedants out there, but it might be a long convoluted sentence.

MR4D 6y ago

This is a great point. A better title would have been something like "Traffic fatalities in March drop to ####". When I was in school, our statistics prof used to put up that daily chart on the bottom of the USA Today front page. He wouldn't start class until we found two or three things wrong with it. By the end of the semester, nobody in the class trusted anything from that newspaper. Great learning experience!

munk-a 6y ago
Talking about terrible statistical presentation - I don't know if you saw this graph[1] that Georgia published displaying corona virus impact but if not... there is something a bit off with it. 1. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/05/19/18/28584104-8336989-image-a-2_1589908458740.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/05/19/18/28584104-8336989-...
- brewdad 6y ago
  That one is so bad and so obvious to anyone who takes the time to actually read the labels that it feels like a case of malicious compliance. A boss needed a chart to support a falling case count and someone made him a visually appealing one while also showing the trend is BS.
  - joshuahedlund 6y ago
    As someone who has been watching GA's charts closely over the last few weeks, I actually disagree in this case. It was one chart of several on the page, and not even the most prominent[0], the other charts were still in the right order, and this chart still showed an overall downward trend even put in the correct order. As someone who has dealt with coding lots of data into charts and making frequent changes to them and seen how bugs easily sneak in, I find mistake more likely than malice. [0]https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report
shanecleveland 6y ago
How is the current title misleading? Organ transplants down: Fact. Number of fatalities down: Fact.

rewoi 6y ago

It is just clickbait. People who do not get organs, die in hospitals, not in cars. With that logic person would be a murder, for refusing to "donate" their organs.

Ericson2314 6y ago

FTFY: The roads are safer, the moving vehicles are more dangerous

BurningFrog 6y ago

"Things are pretty OK" will never be a news story. Media will publish "The roads are deadlier", or, if they're unusually responsible, nothing. Remember this when "the news brings you down". They only publish those stories! Not because they're evil, but because those are the one's we'll click on. Just don't think the news is a representative sample of what happens.

fastball 6y ago

This is why I don't read the news anymore.

three_seagrass 6y ago

It's also a lesson in rates vs. absolute numbers in reporting.

shanecleveland 6y ago

The story doesn't state that roads are safer. It says total fatalities are down, thereby increase donor wait times.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Same with COVID. It is quite deadly. But more information is needed to asses risk, e.g. >90% of deaths are to those with preexisting conditions.