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	BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Danger to your child! Monday, August 10, 2009 Danger to your child! I saw a link to this on Eschaton, and found the quoted bit interesting enough to repeat/print. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data reveal that the likelihood that a car wreck will take the life of someone before age 18 is about one in 10,000. Take away teen drivers, it’s about three in 100,000 for children 14 and younger. Child abduction by a stranger, perhaps a parent’s worst fear? “Of all the dangers to children, this is the one most alarming and the most frightening and probably the least likely to ever happen,” said Paula S. Fass, a University of California-Berkeley professor who wrote “Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America.” The odds are about 1.5 in a million. “We live in a nation where dramatic things capture our attention” Fass said of our fears about children. “They are sensationalized by the media and by our imaginations. To restate that confusingly-worded math, 1/1,500,000 kids under 18 are abducted by strangers. 1/10,000 kids under 18 die in car crashes, or 150/1,500,000. So a minor is 150x more likely to die in a car crash than to be abducted by a stranger, and that's death. Some considerable % of the abducted kids are returned, safe and sound, hours or days after they were taken. Even if you remove the under-18 driving deaths by teens who were driving (and are presumably past the age at which parents do much worrying about them being kidnapped) and you get 3/100,000 kids 14 and under killed in car crashes. Or 45/1,500,000, i.e. you are 45x more likely to have your child die in your own car than have them abducted by a stranger. I wonder how many kids have been killed (much less seriously injured) by parents who were driving, saw one of those Amber Alert signs on the freeway, lost concentration, and rolled their minivan? This is fairly simple human psychology. We all like to feel that we're in control of things, and we feel that when driving, rightly or not. Someone unknown taking our kid = lack of control. Same reason far more people die falling in their own bathtub than are killed by terrorists, eaten by sharks, etc, but which do people worry about, and which does the media focus their exploitative, unblinking lens upon? I also find it illustrative the death stats for means of transportation. Multiples more people die in car crashes than on trains, buses, and planes combined, but when some train derails or a site seeing chopper goes down it's huge news, while the dozens of automobile fatalities in your town every week aren't even noticed, except when they come with exceptional circumstances. All that said, even the basic premise of the news item is flawed, since the vast majority of child abductions are not by strangers. They're during custody fights, weird uncles, family friends, etc. As with murder victims, concerned parents have almost nothing to worry about in terms of stranger. It's almost always someone you know, quite often someone you're sharing a bed with tonight, who will kill you or take your child. Sleep well! Labels: psychology Posted by: Flux # 2:44 PM Comments: Mebbe the media plays up major accidents because of the rarity? When something people take for granted as being safe goes wrong, that is news (especially given the volume of carnage involved in such events). Dipshits go off the highway and into a tree multiple times a day, and they often take only one or two people -- if any -- with them. Of course the media's goal is shock-and-awe, but there are legitimate reasons to focus on one over the other. #: 4:40 PM posted by Anonymous Where are you getting the 1,500,000 number? Wouldn't "1.5 in a million" (or 3 in 2,000,000) be 1 in 666,667? (rounded up) That'd be 66.67x less likely than the car wreck for ages 0-18 and 20x less for ages 0-14. #: 10:13 AM posted by Anonymous John Stossel has mentioned this media phenomenon as well (focus on the sensational, unlikely events while no longer reporting the more dangerous issues). #: 10:54 AM posted by Aahzmadius This is particularly evident with swine flu reporting about the number of deaths. But so far it looks like swine flu is actually less lethal, albeit more infectious, than standard seasonal flu. And yet the media are acting like it's the bubonic plague and the end of the world (or they were, 8 weeks ago). #: 6:50 PM posted by Lanthanide Post a Comment << Home Archives May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2012

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