Comments on: OTB Radio – TONIGHT at 7 Eastern

By: odograph

odograph — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:55:48 +0000

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

By: odograph

odograph — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:49:54 +0000

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)

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 11:14:49 +0000

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.

By: odograph

odograph — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:53:52 +0000

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)