Statistics, wherein the truth lies...

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MSI
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Statistics, wherein the truth lies...

Post by MSI »

Mar 2, 2010:Statistics, wherein the truth lies…
New York Times report Data Shows Camrys Not Recalled Also Had Problems
Do you know that statistically you can "prove" that certain color cars are more prone to accidents? (an article I read years back made a convincing case against red cars!). And you can probably also "prove" that certain color vehicles are more prone to acceleration problems than other colors. Does that mean we should write articles about recalling all cars of a certain color? I would hope not!
But when the Toyota witch hunt is in full gear, and the press is either being sponsored or fed information by attorneys or simply trying to make a story out of a cursory review…well you get things like the following…
“Of the 12,700 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration consumer complaints analyzed by The Times, the Ford Motor Company had the most, about 3,500. Toyota ranked second, with about 3,000 complaints, but those were linked to far more accidents — 1,000 — compared to 450 crashes for Ford.”
So by the same token, if they were on a Ford witch hunt then those numbers might be interpreted to reveal that Ford’s are killing more folks so they aren’t around to complain!!
“All told, from 2000 through 2009, Toyota had one speed-control crash complaint per 20,454 vehicles sold in the United States. Ford had one complaint per 64,679 vehicles. Honda had one per 70,112 and G.M. one per 179,821.”
Again, the operative words are “speed control crash complaint”, Ford, Honda and GM are killing them folks more than Toyota (did they cross link the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data for the same years to see how many deaths there were for each of these vehicle makes? See any evil trend??
They also state “A high incidence of crashes linked to speed control has occurred in earlier model Camrys. During 2004, 125 crashes reported to the highway safety agency were linked to speed control. About 80 of those involved Camrys.”
Note in this portion they selected a single year to make their case. If the trend truly existed, one would expect first that there’d be a much more significant difference in the numbers and that they’d list ALL years reviewed and additional detail about the date; Was this for 2004 cars? Or just accidents which occurred during 2004?
You get the picture, at first read the report contains many unanswered issued.
See the New York Times report Data Shows Camrys Not Recalled Also Had Problems
Also see The Problems with Statistics which includes Items to Consider about Statistics.
MSI
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Re: Statistics, wherein the truth lies...

Post by MSI »

May 10, 2010: How did the reporters looking at the NHTSA compliants overlook the following form a more recent AP report:Spike in Prius complaints may not be all it seems
"In the first 10 weeks of 2010 272 complaints have been filed nationwide for speed control problems with the Prius. In 2009 only 74 complaints were filed. in 2008 only 8! For brake problems, 1,816 complaints have been filed in 2010 compared with only 90 in all of 2009 and fewer than 20 in every other year of the last decade."How was that overlooked?
MSI
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Re: Statistics, wherein the truth lies...

Post by MSI »

Be sure to also review Toyota complaints in perspective for a look back at complaints over the years.This Toyota story is blown way out of proportion!
Was there as similar amount of outrage, panic, and congressional interference when NHTSA was receiving more than 10,000 complaints per year on GM and Ford vehicles?
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