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OTB Radio – TONIGHT at 7 Eastern

OTB Radio Since tomorrow is Christmas Eve, the next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live TONIGHT from 7-8 Eastern.

Dave Schuler and (maybe) Steve Verdon will join me to discuss goodness knows what.

Please join us. We’ll also be taking your calls at (646) 716-7030.

You can play the show, subscribe to its feed, or share it with your friends via the widget below:

(Note: The playback automatically updates to the most recent show available. Older shows can be accessed at the show archives.)

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.

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Comments
 

i think I'm listening to the old one.

I've got a chem degree, only somewhat used. My early programming jobs were for medical and environmental systems, but I wondered off to more mainstream web & related things. So I guess I'm saying chemists can always find jobs, but don't necessarily look for them in the lab.

"small unsafe cars"? That old chestnut? Jeez louise, I've dropped the death per million mile stats (per model) here often enough. Get with the data.

(especially after decrying the death of science)

Posted by odograph | December 23, 2008 | 08:53 pm | Permalink
 

odo: I haven't analyzed the data but it's simply implausible to me that small cars are as survivable as large ones. Now, it may well be that the type of people who drive small cars are less likely to get into serious crashes than those who drive larger ones or that there are other variables at work. But, in a head-on collision between a Toyota Corolla and a Cadillac Escalade, I'd rather be in the latter.

Posted by James Joyner | December 24, 2008 | 06:14 am | Permalink
 

I didn't push the pdf that hard, but here is my past reference to it.

You sound like a friendly guy in the audio James, so I almost hate to call you on all that "factiness" above. Yes, SUVs feel safer, and we can cherry pick comparisons.

The thing to ask yourself ... well two things:

1) First when looking at small cars is it fair to cherry pick the worst? When some nice inexpensive and widely available ones have many "safety stars" and good real-world safety? The Honda Civic beats (by a hair) the "risk to driver" rating for the average SUV. Nonetheless, the average SUV driver feels safer than a Civic driver.

The Jetta beats it by a fair margin, and while I didn't see it in a quick re-scan, I think the Camry is better again.

There is some human irrationality there in response to the simple size of SUVs.

2) Do you want to talk about risk to other drivers? Should we consider any moral aspect?

(see page 15 of the pdf)

Posted by odograph | December 24, 2008 | 07:49 am | Permalink
 

Maybe I should do a 'shorter' for people who don't want to look up the pdf:

While many SUVs are safer than the overall fleet, you can find small cars that are safer yet again ... while being a much smaller risk to other drivers. For instance a huge Suburban is safe, but a Camry is safer to you (while being half the risk to other people).

That's my take on page 4 of this pdf

Posted by odograph | December 24, 2008 | 07:55 am | Permalink
 

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