Category: Blog / Article

Autonomous Cars and Misleading Headlines

On By The EditorIn Blog / Article

The Associated Press attached a very misleading headline to a story about the expected collision rate of the autonomous cars of the near future.

This is their published headline:

Study: Autonomous vehicles won’t make roads completely safe

The headline is technically true. No autonomous car technology will ever prevent all car accidents. Nor will it allow passengers to lose weight by eating donuts on the way to their destination.

But this is what the study actually found:

  • Auto safety experts say humans cause about 94% of U.S. crashes
  • Autonomous cars are expected to stop about 33% of those crashes

The second point was written as:

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study says computer-controlled robocars will only stop about one-third of them.

Only?

Roughly 35,000 people die on US roads each year. Over a million people per year die in crashes globally. Billions of dollars in property are damaged in these accidents. Per the NHTSA, speed-related crashes alone cost Americans over $40 billion each year.

AP writers decided that preventing one-third of these accidents with computer programming and sensors was somehow disappointing. The expectations of any technology are always outsized. Journalists and the public then dismiss huge advances and years of engineering labor because the technology didn’t meet the inflated statistic it was, perhaps unfairly, expected to meet.

Photo by Michael Jin on Unsplash

Will Population Increase or Decrease?

On By The EditorIn Blog / Article

Contrary to the common worry that the world will soon become overpopulated, two Canadian researchers have a new book out, Empty Planet, to make the statistical case that the opposite may actually occur.

They base their argument around some trends the United Nations doesn’t take into account in their projections, including how the increasing education levels and professional opportunities available to women throughout Africa, South America and Asia will translate to a lower global birthrate. Interesting interview with the authors in Wired.

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash

The Last Civil War Pension

On By The EditorIn Blog / Article

Per the Wall Street Journal, the last woman alive receiving a pension from the Civil War died today.

The deceased was 90 years old and was therefore born in 1930, roughly 65 years after the Civil War was over.

The soldier receiving the pension, her late husband, was almost 50 years older than her. A former Confederate soldier, he later defected to join the Union Army.

For his service to the Union, he received roughly $74 a month from the VA. The pension was passed on to his wife.