Death toll from traffic accidents 390 times that as from terrorism

[buttmunch]

The body count from road accidents in developed economies is 390 times higher than the death toll in these countries from international terrorism, says a study appearing in a specialist journal, Injury Prevention. In 2001, as many people died every 26 days on American roads as died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it says.


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Researchers led by Nick Wilson of Otago University, New Zealand, trawled through a US State Department database of deaths caused by international terrorism, and compared this with an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development database on road crash deaths among 29 OECD countries.

The study covered two years, in 2000 and 2001.

The authors acknowledge the widespread emotional, political and economic impacts of terrorism, but they also point out the enormous difference in scale between the two death tolls.

"Policymakers need to be aware of this when allocating resources to preventing these two avoidable causes of mortality," they say.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/1....72wocvgo.html

[ourmaninBusan]

In 2001, as many people died every 26 days on American roads
as died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it says.

This is typical. But big car companies are profiting from death on
the highways, so we never see comparisons like the one in that link.
I haven't seen too many movies depict the auto industry as a
modern-day holocaust that spans the globe -- just an obscure
Godard film called Le Weekend -- but you could make that case.

Another case in point -- the media hysteria about SARS about 2 or 3
years ago. Reporters were having fits because the disease had
killed 500 people worldwide in only a few weeks.

However, some countries lose 500 people every month due to
cholera -- which is completely curable. (Cholera is caused by
dirty drinking water. If you give people clean water, cholera
is cured.) Who benefited, financially, from that cleverly-marketed
non-epidemic called SARS?

[buttmunch]

Nice post, ourman. You are spot on. It's much easier to spread hysteria about a 'scary' threat...I think the current bird flu hysteria (which of course, could cause problems in the future) is a good example of what you're talking about.