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Matt Snyders

Denver, Colorado
Commenter for
44 weeks 5 days

Recent Comments

Posted on 08/11/12 at 10:41 am in response to Pedestrian deaths rise nationally and in Minnesota — and drivers mostly to blame

"It’s a trend that has traffic safety experts concerned."

Trend?! Jesus, what sensationalist garbage. Here are the numbers of pedestrian deaths in the U.S. during the aughts:

2001: 4,901
2002: 4,851
2003: 4,774
2004: 4,675
2005: 4,892
2006: 4,795
2007: 4,699
2008: 4,414
2009: 4,109
2010: 4,280

2010's death tally is lower than every other year on record, excepting the 2009 outlier.

On average, 4,639 pedestrians...

Posted on 08/12/12 at 01:03 pm in response to Pedestrian deaths rise nationally and in Minnesota — and drivers mostly to blame

If you plug the above-listed figures into a scatter plot you will indeed notice an undeniable trend... problem is, it veers in the exact opposite direction of what this article implies. It should be obvious that a minuscule singular uptick does not constitute a "trend." Not only is it bad math to label it as such, it's downright abuse of the English language. It's rather surreal that this should be debatable at all-- the numbers are right there staring us in the face!