Seatbelt example. Graphs are produced showing fall off in deaths after introduction. They look impressive unless you move the timeline back to 1945 when a steep, continual drop in in-car deaths is observed, despite increase in number of vehicles and miles driven. Nobody knows why.
The apparent impressive drop-off with the introduction o…
Seatbelt example. Graphs are produced showing fall off in deaths after introduction. They look impressive unless you move the timeline back to 1945 when a steep, continual drop in in-car deaths is observed, despite increase in number of vehicles and miles driven. Nobody knows why.
The apparent impressive drop-off with the introduction of seat belts is just the tail end of that trend, selective use of the data. And if you extend the curve further beyond the immediate period after seat belt mandates, the curve flattens and then increases slightly.
In other words, from the data it is unclear how many lives were saved by seatbelts. We do know - but not widely publicised - that it caused an increase in death and injury to back seat passengers requiring back seat seat-belt mandate.
So we can say that if some front seat lives were saved, this was at the expense of back seat lives.
Data now shows that as in-car deaths have reduced, deaths of other road users has increased. So the total deaths from RTAs has not substantially altered - unless you carefully select the data, scale of the graph, and start and end-points - the risk has been moved from inside to outside the car.
Seatbelt example. Graphs are produced showing fall off in deaths after introduction. They look impressive unless you move the timeline back to 1945 when a steep, continual drop in in-car deaths is observed, despite increase in number of vehicles and miles driven. Nobody knows why.
The apparent impressive drop-off with the introduction of seat belts is just the tail end of that trend, selective use of the data. And if you extend the curve further beyond the immediate period after seat belt mandates, the curve flattens and then increases slightly.
In other words, from the data it is unclear how many lives were saved by seatbelts. We do know - but not widely publicised - that it caused an increase in death and injury to back seat passengers requiring back seat seat-belt mandate.
So we can say that if some front seat lives were saved, this was at the expense of back seat lives.
Data now shows that as in-car deaths have reduced, deaths of other road users has increased. So the total deaths from RTAs has not substantially altered - unless you carefully select the data, scale of the graph, and start and end-points - the risk has been moved from inside to outside the car.
Those famous ‘unintended consequences’.
Thanks for the info!
Which proves again that statistics can tell almost anything you want if you manipulate a bit
exactly how they did the measles vaccine claim
very interesting information