Date:         Fri, 19 Dec 2003 17:45:44 -0500
Reply-To:     Charles Harbour <harbourcharles@JOHNDEERE.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Charles Harbour <harbourcharles@JOHNDEERE.COM>
Subject:      OT - Friday afternoon funny
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

From the yahoo.com news headline box (warning, stats humor coming):

Silver Colored Cars Safest, New Zealand Scientists Say

LONDON (Reuters) - Silver colored cars are less likely to be involved in a
crash causing serious injuries, New Zealand scientists said Friday.

About 3,000 people die in road traffic accidents around the world each day
but researchers at the University of Auckland said the risk of being
injured in a silver car was less than in cars of other colors.

"Silver cars were about 50 percent less likely to be involved in a crash
resulting in serious injury than white cars," Sue Furness and her
colleagues said in a report in The British Medical Journal.

The researchers studied the impact of car color on the risk of a serious
injury in a study of more than 1,000 drivers in New Zealand between 1998
and 1999.

About half the drivers had been involved in a crash in which one or more
occupants had been admitted to hospital or died while 571 had not had
crashes and acted as a control group.

After taking into account factors such as the age and sex of the driver,
the use of seat belts, the age of the vehicle and the road conditions,
color still had an impact.

The researchers said there was an increased risk of a serious injury in
brown cars and the odds were also higher for black and green cars.

They did not explain why car color has an influence but said previous
research suggested that white or light-colored cars are less likely to be
involved in a crash than cars of other colors.

"Increasing the proportion of silver cars could be an effective passive
strategy to reduce the burden of injury from car crashes," Furness added.

=============================================
<begin editorial rant>
So, if we all drove silver cars, there would be fewer crashes?  Hysterical.

On the first day of every statistics class I’ve ever taken, the professor
began the class with: ‘the existence of a correlation does <not> imply any
causal relationship’.  Apparently these folks never attended one of my
stats classes....

Here’s one that I don’t need any research to prove: red cars go faster than
green cars.  Amazing how the car manufacturers get the red ones to go
faster....

They may actually be onto something there with the white cars are involved
in fewer crashes (a la the cyclops brake light—-they’re probably more
visible under less-than-ideal conditions), though they don’t appear to
pursue it.  Am also interested to see what they actually published vs. what
reuters reported…..

Perhaps they should give personality tests to the various color groups and
see if anything pops out at them.  Hmmmm.

It should be noted that I drive a silver car...

CH