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April 20, 2005
Bad news
Wow, I get most of my news from NPR and the Daily Show and sometimes I forget that the average media is as bad as they make fun of (the latter rather than the former).
I had the CBS Early Show on for a few minutes this morning and they were covering the story of a fatal school bus accident. They gave the statistic that out of 40,000 roadway fatalities last year, 6 were school bus riders. They showed a clip of a NTSB official commenting that busses are generally very safe because of their size and because of 30 years of safety design. They elaborated with stock footage of crash test dummies to demonstrate how those high padded seats form a safety "cage" around children. And then they went to the anchor who had an in-studio guest and the first words out of the anchor's mouth were "I was shocked to learn this morning that Virginia and most other states do not have mandatory seat belt laws for school busses."
Why?! Why are you shocked!? Did you listen to your own broadcast? It sounds to me like school busses are amazingly safe. 6 deaths out of 40,000? 30 years of safety design? But let's start some useless scare-mongering! Aggghhhh! [Throw hands up and switch the channel back to Comedy Central.]
Posted by Fuzzy at April 20, 2005 10:00 AM