Grandma got run over by a reindeer
During the Christmas news-deficiency season there was a story warning people to be careful around all the dangerous holiday accident risks. Our Stat of the Week award went to Sonia Pollak, who pointed out that 3040 accidents predicted for Christmas Day was quite a bit lower than the average for other days.
The story has returned in the past tense. The ACC is reporting 3238 accident claims for Christmas Day (close to what they predicted, about 25% lower than an average day) and $850,000 in claims. Even assuming that the initial claims relate only to medical treatment, that’s about half of the average daily expenditure (medical treatment, $512 million/yr, hospital treatment – $199.3 million/yr)
We could prevent accidents and save money by being especially careful on Christmas Day. But we could probably prevent more accidents and save more money by being especially careful on some other day, such as the anniversary of some significant historical accident. I suggest June 14.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Thanks for the lunchtime laugh of June 14!
13 years ago
[…] ten people, and, with setup and rehearsals, often more than one day. It looks as though weddings, like Christmas, are actually safer than ordinary […]
11 years ago