The Odds of Surviving a Plane Crash
The Book of Odds takes a look at a question that flashes through the minds of many people the moment they board an airplane: what are your odds of surviving a plane crash? They found that “[t]he...
View ArticleWhen That Child in the Street Is an Optical Illusion
Let’s say you live or work in an area where there are a lot of vulnerable pedestrians – kids, maybe – and a lot of cars as well, and that the cars habitually drive too fast for your taste. What do you...
View ArticleIn Delhi, a Safer Bus Line?
Delhi’s Blueline buses are notoriously deadly, perhaps due to a perverse incentive system that rewarded drivers for speedy progress and discouraged investments in the vehicles. Dave Prager, who...
View ArticleOur Daily Bleg: How to Get Firefighters to Wear Seat Belts?
We recently published a post about the dramatic decline in U.S. fire deaths over the past century. A reader named Tricia Hurlbutt writes in with a related challenge: I work for the National Fallen...
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Freakonomics Radio: Death by Fire? Probably Not
Freakonomics Radio Death by Fire? Probably Not: Fire deaths in the U.S. have fallen 90 percent over the past 100 years, a great and greatly underappreciated gain. How did it happen — and could we ever...
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Suicides Now More Plentiful Than Traffic Deaths
Good news from NHTSA on the driving front: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) early projections, the number of traffic fatalities fell three percent between 2009...
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Should We Be Talking About a “Crime Dividend”?
(iStockphoto) Here’s an interesting article by Megan Finnegan from West Side Spirit, a neighborhood newspaper in New York City, about the shutdown of a 30-year-old citizens’ crime-prevention program....
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Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Steps
Photo: PeterJBellis James Barron and Sydney Ember write in the New York Times about the upcoming closure of the crown of the Statue of Liberty. If you are skeptical of how the government spends money,...
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Does Marijuana Legalization Lead to Fewer Traffic Fatalities?
Photo: aforero That’s the claim of a new paper by D. Mark Anderson and Daniel I. Rees, put out by the IZA, titled “Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption”: To date, 16...
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The Power of the President — and the Thumb
Our Freakonomics Radio project includes a regular podcast and Marketplace segment. But twice a year, we also produce a set of five one-hour specials that play on public-radio stations across the...
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Finally, I Was Right About Something
(Photo: Bill Alldredge) Seven years ago, I blogged about how nonsensical many airline rules and regulations seemed to be. At the very top of my list was the prohibition on the use of electronics before...
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A Safe Hitchhiking Model?
(Photo: Holly Clarke) Our podcast called “Where Have All the Hitchhikers Gone?” got a listener named Jenny O’Brien thinking. Here’s what she wrote us: Here’s the back story: I live in a rural area in...
View ArticleThe FREAK-est Links
Are business schools good for their graduates? (HT: Theodore Pappas) Calling all data crunchers: a grant opportunity. (HT: Brian Kelsey) Police stop two German children attempting to elope to Africa....
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FREAK Shots: Stating the Obvious
Police in England have been criticized for posting signs with obvious messages such as “Caution: water on road during rain,” and “All fuel must be paid for,” according to a BBC report. The Plain...
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After Google Earth Is Banned, What's Next?
For all the good that Google Earth has brought to the world, it’s been a boon for ne’er-do-wells and mischief-makers as well. In the U.K., teenage hooligans allegedly use it to scope out private pools...
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Can the Hair Club for Men Help Solve the Food Safety Problem?
Here’s a post I coauthored with Peter Siegelman (an economist who teaches at University of Connecticut law school) who is one of my earliest and most frequent coauthors (see, for example, here and...
View ArticleWould Electric Cars Increase Property Values on Noisy Streets?
A reader named Tomas asks an interesting question: If electric cars became the dominant form of urban transport, would houses on main roads jump in value due to a decrease in noise? Of course Tomas’s...
View ArticleBlack Boxes and Coffin Corners
As searchers recover more wreckage from the Air France jetliner that crashed into the Atlantic last week, Miles O’Brien reports on the perils the jet faced as it flew headlong to its doom in a gauntlet...
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The Danger of Safety
Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times In case you haven’t heard, an accident on the Washington metro claimed nine lives last week. But then again, chances are you have heard, as the crash got wide...
View ArticleWhat the Secretary of Transportation Has to Say About My Car Seat Research
On his blog, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood dismisses my research (see here and here) on car seats. My favorite quote from the secretary: “Now, if you want to slice up the data to be...
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