Comment by asgraham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asgraham | Hacker News Reader

I'm absolutely behind both the message and call to action of this article; the evidence is irrefutable; this comment should not be interpreted as calling into question the headline at all: the underlying data looks solid.

However. Why oh why did this author trash their own credibility by explicitly citing the "even more alarming [surge] at the state level" where "walker deaths had increased a shocking 266.67 percent in Nebraska, 150 percent in New Hampshire, and 87.5 percent in Delaware." They of course give the bare minimum caveat that "[t]hose dramatic numbers are partly explained by those states' small populations," but they are entirely explained by those states' small pedestrian fatality rates. Such as New Hampshire's increase from 2 to 5 fatalities. The other two "alarming" surges are equally unmentionable[1] in the light of actually reading the numbers.

I do have to give them credit for including the relevant numbers directly in an image in the article so that I didn't have to do any digging to figure out why those states had such high increases. But that just makes me even more baffled why they didn't catch themselves.

[1] Literally unmentionable, as in: those particular percentages cannot in good conscience be mentioned anywhere near a self-respecting argument for transportation reform.

Yes. "From 2019-2022, pedestrian deaths tripled in Vermont!" sounds alarming and then you see it went from 1 to 3. It's still bad that people died, and bad that it's more, but that would really be reaching for clickbait territory.

And is it even a rate at all? They give number of fatalities, but how does that compare to the number of pedestrians? Or rather number x time spent walking? Car statistics are often given in terms of total miles traveled, for instance. A total is not a rate.

Totally agree our streets are way too dangerous, and being a pedestrian can be terrifying. That really needs to be fixed.

But not in a misleading way. If anything, things like this might scare people out of walking, meaning less pedestrians, and therefore less reason to solve it. That's counterproductive.

Imagine if a state had gone from 0 to 1 pedestrian deaths. An infinity percent increase. Walking anywhere would be a death sentence.

Streetsblog has a tendency to use infrequent/irrelevant traffic deaths and such to paint pictures about wider things. Things like, using hit and runs at stop signs to argue about speed limits. They did that a lot in Chicago when the city was pushing to raise the speed camera sensitivity from 10mph to 5mph. It makes it really difficult to take their writing (about genuine problems) seriously.

> infrequent/irrelevant traffic deaths

I’m all onboard the accuracy train with you, but I must say that describing any kind of traffic death as “irrelevant” seems very cold. Every person that dies on the road matters.

Of course, but when you stretch the truth, you lose the message and lose the people you need to reach the most. To me, that sort of truth stretching is way colder than I could ever be.

> Things like, using hit and runs at stop signs to argue about speed limits.

That doesn't sound irrelevant to me. Drivers around my area have a tendency to not quite stop at stop signs before rolling into the crosswalk. If they're going slower they have more ability to react to a pedestrian stepping out into the crosswalk.

> Why oh why did this author trash their own credibility...

I follow streetsblog regularly, because, like you, I also think the message they are advocating for is important and more or less completely neglected in the United States, though a few cities/states are getting better. Cops regularly victim blame when pedestrians or cyclists are hit by cars, and people who kill others with their cars often have no consequences whatsoever. When I was still living in the US, I didn't feel my children were safe in traffic, ever. They do this stuff so much better in many other parts of the world.

That being said, that blog's writing style is really grating at times. They often raise these sort of scandalizing points in posts that are otherwise on point. I don't know why, maybe to produce sound bytes, maybe because the authors are so personally invested in the topic they can't help but exaggerate, or whatever.

It's really annoying.

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