I know, I shouldn’t be reading USA Today.
A grade schooler would’ve been proud had they written the front-page story in today’s Money section: “People buy small cars even though they can be deadly.”
The gist of the story: madmen everywhere are buying more small cars, despite their horrifying safety levels, just to save a dime on gas.
Just look at this devastating chart:
This means, that if you’re in a small car, you have a 0.0108 percent chance of dying in a car accident, versus the much safer 0.0055 percent chance of dying if you’re in an SUV. This chart should be titled: “Foolish cheapskates and their small-car death wish.”
When you’re talking “deaths per million,” and the highest number barely cracks 100, you probably don’t have enough to write this particular scare story.
To further kill the story’s validity, USA Today includes this chart:
Thank God they put that drastic 0.2 percent jump in small car sales in bold, otherwise I might’ve seen that 4.2 percent increase in SUV sales. Why did that number go up? Where’s my “People buy more SUVs even though they can’t afford the payments or gas” story?
Come on, USA Today.