GREENSBORO, NC -- There is a certain type of reporting error that astounds me, I call it an affront to common knowledge, where an assertion goes unchecked even though, on its face, it seems to violate common sense. It is the kind of thing a reporter or editor with general curiosity and some basic knowledge of the world would be compelled to stop and double check.
Today at the News & Record:
"In the United States, a drunken driver causes someone to die every 52 seconds."Reporter Danielle Battaglia doesn't cite a source for that tidbit but, on its face, it sounds hard to believe.
Just some quick math challenges the possibility this is true: If there is a drunk driving fatality every 52 seconds, then that's 69 drunk driving deaths every hour; 1,661 a day; 11,630 per week; and 606,000 per year.
And here is where a lack of general knowledge comes in: That is a huge number of deaths per year for any single cause. It should jump out to a professional reporter and her professional editors as extremely unlikely.
A quick search of "leading causes of death" would show that such a number would make drunk driving fatalities the leading cause of death in the United States, ahead of the roughly 598,000 per year from heart disease, the 577,000 from cancer and the third place 143,000 from lung disease. (source: Centers for Disease Control)
The fact is, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "In 2011, 9,878 people were killed in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes." That's far from insignificant, but it is nowhere near the hysterical one every 52 seconds the News & Record reported. It is about one every hour to give you a sense of just how far off the N&R is.
And a big thumbs down to WGHP MyFox8 who copied and pasted this error to their website from the News & Record without correction.
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