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Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

> "Pedestrian crash deaths have risen 80 percent since hitting their low in 2009."

It's way too common to read articles where clearly cherry-picked prose takes the place of a more informative graph, only to lookup said graph and find that the article seems to be trying to intentionally distort the data to make some point.

Here's more complete data, the US population was 250 million in 1990, 330 million in 2021. So the 7400 that year was ~8400 in 1990 if it's adjusted for population growth:

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2019/07/105095-us-pedestrian...

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That article lists the minimum death rate at 4109, and 7400 today. So it went from 4109/250000000=1.64x10^-5 to 7400/330000000=2.24x10^-5. Thats an increase of 37%. That's still shocking.

Sure, but now we've gone from an increase of 80% to less than half of that just by adjusting for population.

Now, why do you think they picked 2009? Were cars magically safer that year, or perhaps because it's the year after the economic crash, and therefore people were simply driving less?

Which was my point, not that there's nothing to be said about vehicle design contributing to this, but that it's annoying to read articles where the authors are clearly massaging the data to fit their agenda.

They picked 2009 because its the minima in the very graph you posted.

This is not a significant change, the trend still clearly shows an increase since the low in 2009.

> It's way too common to read articles where clearly cherry-picked prose takes the place of a more informative graph, only to lookup said graph and find that the article seems to be trying to intentionally distort the data to make some point.

Huh? The article doesn't say anything about 1990. It says they rose by 80% after hitting their low in 2009. Population rose steadily from 1990 to 2023, so if you are trying to cite population increase as a factor in the rise from 2009 to 2023, you also need to explain how it didn't contribute to the drop from 1990 to 2009.

I would say that, actually, you are (perhaps unintentionally) distorting the data to fit your worldview while trying to criticize the article.

did an suv write this

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