Showing posts with label probability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label probability. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Etan Patz and Why Child Abductions Make the News
Frequent quarterbacker Alan (who blogs over at Poor Mojo) shared a new Time column today about Etan Patz, the New York City first grader who disappeared in 1979 in New York City. The case is in the news lately because police in search of clues have recently been digging up a basement near where the boy lived. The column talks about the ways we have come to expect that we can prevent bad things from happening to our children, be they stranger abductions or broken bones.
Alan comments,
The fact is your child is far more likely to die young in a motor vehicle accident than to be kidnapped by a stranger and murdered. Tens of thousands of times more likely. But car accidents are quotidian and kidnappings are good copy and so we live in terror.I agree with Alan. We tend to vastly overestimate the chances of a child being abducted by a stranger (about 115 cases a year, with 60% surviving and only 4% remaining unsolved) and vastly underestimate their chances of being killed in a car crash. And car crashes are, indeed, "quotidian" (which I had to look up -- it means mundane or every-day). I suppose that kidnappings also make good news stories. But that begs the question, why do they make good news stories? And why don't car crashes make good stories, too?
First of all, the news tends to cover things that are unusual. If they covered everything, we'd never do anything but watch the news. This is why there is a real dearth of "good news" on as well. Good news -- or at least neutral news -- is actually much more common than bad news. For the most part, if good news is about something common, we don't expect to see it covered. There are no stories about your kid's birthday party, or the lovely bike ride you took last weekend. That's common.
Second, we also expect to see news that affects us, and this is where it gets complicated. Most of us, because it is common, are aware of the risk of traffic accidents. We believe, however, that we can master those risks. Those accidents happen to someone else -- someone not being careful, not wearing a seat belt, under the influence or otherwise foolish. We know what is dangerous about driving a car, and we don't do those things.
We also believe that we can master the risks to our children. We give them bike helmets and put them in car seats. We don't let our toddlers have small toys. We take them to the doctor. For the most part, in fact, we are right. Kids get hurt, sure, but most kids don't get killed in this country.
Stranger abductions make the news because they bring to our attention something that we don't want to admit. About 115 times a year, parents just like us have kids who are abducted. Those parents also had helmets and car seats and medical care. They kept an eye on their kids as best as they could. And someone took them anyway. They didn't master the risk. We want to know what they could have done differently so we can.
Etan Patz's story is compelling because it has to do with a child, because it was the first case to appear on a milk carton, and because it is unsolved. It is also compelling because he disappeared walking to the school bus alone for the first time ever. We all make that decision for our kids at one point or another. We all know it's a risk. We don't read about Etan because it's sensational. We read because we want it to be different for our kid.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Try Explaining This One to Your Kids
There was a car bombing in Monroe, Michigan on Tuesday.
How many of you just went back and read that again to make sure you had read it correctly? I sure did when I saw the headline. Monroe, Michigan, population 20,700 and change, had a car bombing. A local lawyer, aged 42, and his sons, 11 and 13, were driving to football practice around 5:30 when a pipe bomb placed under the passenger seat went off, injuring all three of them. The boys are still in the hospital. The dad has been released.
At moments like this, I usually flip automatically into what I like to call "Law and Order" mode. Who are the most likely suspects? I'm thinking someone on the other side of a case. Turns out this guy handled divorces, so that makes it even juicier. Someone got screwed in a divorce, decides to kill the lawyer. We haven't even finished the opening credits, and the Quarterback has solved the case.
Of course, if this were a "Law and Order" episode, the very fact that the case was solved so quickly would indicate with certainty that we've got the wrong guy. There's a whole 40 minutes of TV to fill, after all, so it's either that or some big constitutional issue in how I conducted the investigation.
But I digress, which is easy to do, because this story just doesn't seem real. This is not something that happens in real life. I've written often about how trauma messes up our ideas of what is likely vs. what is possible. But this wasn't even on my possible list. There are places in the world where this happens. Southeast Michigan is not one of them.
The Catholic school that the boys attend held a prayer service for them yesterday. There are also excerpts from a letter from the Principal to parents, and it looks like he did a pretty good job. But this raises the question, how exactly would you explain this to one of the boys' classmates in such a way that was honest but didn't scare them? This is not one of the many types of horrible events that I have a fairly stock way of explaining to kids -- and remember, that's allegedly one of my areas of expertise.
So let's go with general rules of thumb:
Tell the truth, the whole truth, but not all the details unless asked: Your friend is in the hospital. He got very hurt in an accident, but it looks like he's going to be OK.
If they're going to hear it anyway, let them hear it from you: There was an explosion in the car he and his dad and brother were riding in. The police think someone put an explosive device under one of the seats.
Separate what is known from what is not known, and that people are working on it: The police are investigating and they've even called investigators from the federal government. They don't know who did this or why, but they have some good leads and they're trying their best to find out.
Normalize the feeling, educate about the probabilities: This is a pretty scary thing. And one of the reasons it's so scary and such a big deal is because it's incredibly unusual. I've never heard of something like this happening. So even though it really scares me, I also know it's really unlikely to happen again.
Is this going to be enough to make them feel completely safe? No. It probably doesn't make you feel completely safe either. But you have to start somewhere, and then just live with the fact that it's going to feel scary for a while, and it will get better.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Death at a Rangers Game
Thursday night, Shannon Stone, 39, was at the baseball game with his 6 year-old son. The Rangers were playing the A's, and Stone wanted a foul ball. He yelled to Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton
that he wanted the next ball. When a foul came Hamilton's way, he turned and tossed it towards Stone in the stands. Stone, a firefighter with the Brownwood Fire Department, reach out to get it and fell out of the stands head first, 14 feet. He was injured but talking and asked rescue workers to check on his son. Then he had a heart attack and died.If you go to the ABC website, you can see the video of the fall, but not the landing. Stone fell behind a barrier, and was therefore not visible from the field or the stands aside from right near where it happened. The video is horrifying enough if you know how the story ends.
I was pleased to read today that counseling has been offered to the Rangers players and, specifically, to Josh Hamilton. Hamilton asked after Stone after the fall and was told he was awake and talking. He didn't find out that Stone was dead until after the game. Apparently Hamilton is a recovering addict, which will make bouncing back from this event even harder. Unfortunately, when we're under extreme stress we tend to act in our most ingrained and familiar ways. If you're an addict, that addiction is almost as automatic as breathing, and under stress it tends to rear its ugly head.
This is one of those stories that just isn't "supposed" to happen. Taking your kid to the ballgame is about as wholesome as it gets. So immediately, we start looking for someone to blame. If it's someone's fault, then this isn't just a horrible freakish outcome of perfectly reasonable actions on everyone's part. If someone's to blame, somehow the rest of us are safer.
In this case, the Rangers, following a fall by a fan last year, had their railings looked at and pronounced up to code and safe. Hamilton was indulging a fan wanting a ball for his kid, something in other circumstances we would say makes Hamilton a great role model. Stone was doing what fans do, and if you look at the video it doesn't even look like he was reaching unreasonably far to do it. No one did things wrong, and yet this situation is terribly wrong.
Going to the game won't be any more dangerous this weekend than it was last, when I took my own 6 year-old to a game. But boy, it sure feels like it.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Hang Onto Your Parcheesi Boards: Tornadoes Here and There
which says, "Boom, boom, boom, Mr. Brown is a wonder. Boom, boom, boom, Mr. Brown makes thunder." Parcheesi
warnings are for tornadoes. These come from something I'm relatively sure my sister made up (although she will correct me if I'm wrong). Right before Hurricane Bob was due to hit New England in the early 1990's, she said, "Hang onto your Parcheesi boards. It's gonna blow."Last weekend, we had a major family event on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, all of the out of town guests were invited for brunch, and a bunch of them stayed throughout the day. There were 14 people at my house. About midday, we learned that our area was under a tornado watch. This is not such a big deal in Southeast Michigan. It happens pretty frequently, and doesn't usually progress to a tornado warning. Even when it does, however, we don't get too upset. While tornadoes are not unheard of in this neck of the woods, the number of warnings far outstrips the number of actual tornadoes, so we have a plan and a safe room in the basement, but we try to keep things fairly calm. My husband and I discussed the fact that our usual safe room won't hold 14 people, and decided that the room next to it is almost as safe and we would use that if necessary.
A little after 5 PM on Sunday, a Parcheesi warning was issued for our county. We are on the eastern end, so we knew we had some time. I calmly invited our guests to join us in our luxurious basement, bring something to do, and carry down a chair if they preferred not to sit on the floor. At my sister-in-law's request, we brought down a guitar, and for the next hour we all sat around, noses in computers and cell phones, while my mom, my daughter and I passed the guitar around and led the group in various folk songs. A good time was had by all.
When it was over and everyone had posted about it on Facebook, I was somewhat taken aback by the comments we got from friends and family elsewhere. "Was it scary?" "That's disturbing." "How horrible." My sister-in-law praised my calmness, and said she was handling the panic, quietly, for all of us. I explained that I preferred to save my panic for when a tornado actually hits our house.
The bulk of these visiting relations are from Massachusetts, where I grew up. In the 17 years I lived there full time, I can remember no more than three tornado warnings. We would go down to the basement and wait it out, and I remember distinctly one time asking schoolmates what they had done during a warning and them saying things like, "We just hung out and hoped a tornado didn't come." They had no plan at all.
Last night, however, the central and western parts of Massachusetts were slammed by tornadoes, causing major damage in 19 or 20 towns. At least four people died. My family, living as they do in the eastern part of the state, just got a spectacular lightning show.
Meanwhile, in Missouri last week, reports indicate that a lot of people didn't take cover during the Tornado that hit Joplin until they could see the tornado bearing down on them. The sirens go off so often around there, people don't always pay attention anymore.
This is the difficulty of disaster warning systems. You want a system that people will pay attention to and that warns of any disaster that is actually going to hit. But these two goals can be at odds. Any system that catches all the tornadoes that actually hit will also catch a lot of storms that could produce tornadoes but don't. And as long as that's the case, people in areas where those storms are fairly common will not see a tornado warning as being sufficient reason to take cover. Meanwhile, people in areas where such a thing is very unusual will take it seriously, but won't have a plan because they generally don't need one. Locations like ours, in fact, are in some ways ideal. We get enough warnings that we have a plan, but not so many that we don't take it seriously.
You've heard me say many times in this space that we live our lives by
what is likely, not what is possible. We take risks all day long based on the probability that something bad will happen to us, how bad that thing would be, and how disruptive it is to our lives to not take those risks. If a tornado hits near you, it's easy to say, in hindsight, you should have taken cover. It's not as easy to say, for someone else, that taking cover every time the warning goes out is always the absolute right thing to do. It is always the safe thing to do, but "right" depends on how much of a pain it is and how likely the tornado is to actually hit where you are, so everyone will come to his or her own conclusions.
In my household, however, when the siren goes off or the warning comes onto the radio or TV, we'll continue to hold onto our Parcheesis boards. Thanks for asking.
Friday, May 6, 2011
White Powder in Letters: DC Schools Say, "Nya, nya, you can't scare us!"
Someone is sending letters to Washington, D.C. schools with white powder in them. The letters, which also contain the typewritten message, "AL AQEDA-FBI [sic]," have arrived at at least 28 schools thus far, and four more letters have been intercepted. Authorities say that the substance inside them is not hazardous, although they haven't said what it is.
If you do a Google News search for "white powder schools" you will find numerous incidents over the last decade, plus a bunch involving various organizations, institutions, and even Dancing With the Stars. Apparently, something similar even happened in Washington schools last October.
Am I the only one who remembers a time when it would have been the furthest thing from someone's mind to try to scare people with cornstarch? Before the anthrax attacks of 2001
, this just wasn't on anyone's radar screen -- not even the lunatic fringe. Since then, it seems like almost an epidemic.In 2001, schools in Western Pennsylvania (and perhaps elsewhere -- I just happened to work in Western PA at the time) had to scramble over "white powders." A local supplier of science curriculum had a 5th grade science explorations unit which many districts used which asked students to identify various "mystery powders," all of them white. All of a sudden, this didn't seem like a good idea, and replacement units had to be created or purchased.
As far as I can tell from the news coverage of the latest incident, the level of panic occurring at the schools involved is extremely low. It looks like people opened the letters and notified the authorities, who took it seriously and came out to the schools. I'm not seeing reports of school personnel becoming hysterical or evacuating buildings. I'm not seeing any reaction from kids, which seems to indicate that most of them didn't know about it. One school did notice the letter before it came inside and left it outside -- that seems cautious without being a complete overreaction.
The thing is, if we panic every time someone does this, then the bozos who are doing it get what they want. This encourages future bozos to do the same thing. Would it be safer to evacuate every building where this happens? Maybe, maybe not. We may be at the point where the chances of someone getting hurt in the evacuation -- tripping, stepping on something, getting hit by lightning, being a crime victim, getting hit by a car -- are actually greater than the chances of someone getting hurt by a mystery powder in a letter.
You might be surprised to know that the same logic often applies to bomb threats in schools. Many schools do not routinely evacuate if they receive a bomb threat. They wait for the advice of the police and fire departments regarding the specific threat. That's because if you know you can disrupt school -- any school, but particularly your own school -- by phoning in a bomb threat, then this becomes a very attractive thing for kids to do to get out of exams and such. Add to this the risk that someone will phone in a bomb threat and then wait for everyone to start coming outside and do something to them there, and evacuating is not always the thing to do. It depends on the situation.
Often times parents, in particular, don't want to hear that not evacuating is the best thing. Our knee-jerk reaction is that we should evacuate kids if there is any risk or threat. The thing is, that may not be in the best of interests of the kids. If we actually did that, we could well spend every day going in and out of school buildings. Schools have to evaluate relative risk, just as parents do at home. We don't get everyone outside when our dirty ovens start to smoke at home, or every time we hear a funny noise in the night. In loco parentis means that schools must act with the same care that parents would at home, not that they must jump every time someone says "boo." It would be a lot easier, however, if people didn't think it was a good idea to say "boo" in the first place.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The Anomaly of a Mom Who Murders Her Teenagers
Frequent Quarterbacker Jackie sent along a link to an article from the Daily Beast about the murders of Calyx and Beau Schenecker. You probably heard about the murders when they happened at the end of January. The two teenagers -- aged 16 and 13 respectively -- were shot to death in their Tampa, Florida home. The alleged killer, who reportedly has confessed, is their mother, who attempted suicide in the same incident.
Certainly this incident is horrible and worthy of discussion in a blog about traumatic current events. But what catches my eye about the article that Jackie sent along is the headline:
Did This Mom Kill Her Kids?The article explains at some length that it is incredibly rare for mothers to kill their teenage children. Children murdered by their mothers are almost always infants or toddlers. Teenagers murdered by a parent are generally murdered by their fathers.
The article is a decent one, exploring the unanswerable question of why this mom did what she appears to have done. Their was clearly mounting discord in the family, the mom and daughter were seeking counseling, the mother may have been using drugs and was probably depressed, and the dad had recently deployed to the Middle East with the Army. And it points out that we will most likely never know what snapped in Beau and Calyx's mother to make her kill her own children.
But the headline says something else entirely. Did this mom kill her kids? It sure seems like it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of question as to whether she did, only as to why. So why doesn't the headline match the article.
The somewhat boring explanation is that whoever wrote the headline was doing so quickly, skimmed the article, saw the part about this being almost unheard of, and misunderstood the thrust of the article. But I think it was a little more than that.
On the whole, people are very bad at evaluating statistics and probabilities
. It is this phenomenon that was at work when a friend of mine, during a research study, asked people in line for a roller coaster what their chances of dying on the ride were and several people answered "50/50." Did these folks actually think that, on average, people die on the ride half the time? That seems unlikely. They didn't understand what "50/50" means. And I think, on some level, the headline writer didn't understand what something being so rare it is basically unheard of means.The fact that something is unheard of -- even if it has literally never happened ever before -- does not by itself mean that it hasn't happened this time. As the saying goes, there's a first time for everything. What it means is, all other things being equal, it is unlikely to be true.
But all other things aren't equal. This mom confessed. The evidence points solely to her. The fact that she did it is notable because it's unusual. The fact that it's unusual, unfortunately, does not mean it's not true.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
When You Say All the Right Things, and You're Wrong
On the route home from the school where I work and my daughter attends, there has been, for many years, an old, somewhat dilapidated house. It's not a terribly residential neighborhood, and the house neither added nor subtracted much from the area. It was just there. Then, towards the end of May, we drove past and the house that was "just there" wasn't there anymore. Where it had been was a pile of debris, obviously the physical materials that had made up the house.
My daughter gasped when she saw it. "Look, Mom! That house just collapsed!!" I was quick to respond. I assured her that the house didn't just collapse, that it had certainly been demolished to make room for something else and we just happened by in between the demolition and the removal of the debris. "That's good," she replied, "because a house just falling over like that would be pretty scary."
As the days went by, we drove past the spot every day. Soon yellow caution tape went up around the debris pile, but the debris itself didn't move. If we had, indeed, just happened along in between the demolition and the cleanup, clearly we had had ample opportunity. After about a week, a story appeared on our local news website. The headline read:
Vacant house on North Main Street collapses; cleanup awaits city permitAs it turns out, the house was indeed slated for demolition, and the owner had applied for a demolition permit. However, before one was issued, according to the owner, the house collapsed.
It just collapsed.
Not only was I wrong when I told my daughter it hadn't just collapsed (and she will tell you this was hardly the first time I was ever wrong!), but I had reassured her by making her believe something that, as it turns out, wasn't true. This is a big no-no when you're talking to kids who are worried about something. You never lie or hide the truth when they ask a question, because they need to know they can trust you. But, inadvertently, I had told her something that wasn't true. It wasn't a lie, it was a mistake. But it shook the basis of why she wasn't supposed to worry about houses collapsing nonetheless.
Even though it was unintentional, I actually did bring this problem upon myself. When we talked about it initially, I didn't say that a controlled demolition was "my best guess" or "probably" or "most likely" what happened. I said it "certainly" was what happened. I spoke in absolutes about something I didn't actually have the facts about. That's another big no-no. And now we see why.
So what could I do? First, I thanked my lucky stars that this wasn't something that my daughter was really distressed about, so the damage was minimal to none. Second, I acknowledged that I had been wrong. I said,
I know I said that the house didn't collapse, but now we found out that it did. It had been empty for a long time and was in very bad condition, and in fact the owner was getting ready to tear it down. So yes, it 'just collapsed,' but it didn't happen all of a sudden out of the blue.That was good enough for her. And it is some version of what I should have said in the first place. Mistakes
happen, and while it's best to avoid them, it's second best to admit them. Believe it or not, that preserves kids' trust in adults, because they know we're doing our best. For more about talking to kids about traumatic events, check out last week's post about the murder of two kids in Texas, and this list of tips from my website.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Fatal Bear Attack at Yellowstone
One camper was killed and two others injured in the wee hours of Wednesday morning when a bear attacked three tents in a camping area in Yellowstone National Park
. Park officials have closed the campground and set traps for the bear or bears responsible. They have no idea what may have caused the attacks, and say the campers had their food properly secured. Bears looking for food is by far the most common cause of such attacks. This is the first fatal bear attack in Yellowstone since 2001.Anyone who has gone camping with a first time camper of any age (and sometimes with a second, third or later time camper, too) has dealt with their fear of wild animals. Every rustle sounds like a potential threat, and there are plenty of rustles out in the wilderness. We reassure the nervous by saying, "Don't worry, leave them alone and they'll leave you alone. They're more afraid of you than you are of them."
That's not to say that those who are afraid of bears or other wild animals are atypical in any way. One of the reasons bears in campgrounds appear in our popular culture is that it helps us put humor on something that, deep down, we don't find very humorous. When Yogi and Boo-Boo
go after their "pick-a-nick baskets" in "Jellystone Park", we convince ourselves that things aren't really that scary. And when Stephen Colbert
puts bears at the top of nearly every "Threat Down," we feel ok about the fact that yes, we'd prefer they stayed far away from us, thank you very much.The fact is, though, that while the chances of a bear attack
in Yellowstone are perhaps higher than normal, they still aren't very high. In Yellowstone, there is an average of one bear attack per year, and most are not fatal. There are between two and three million visits to Yellowstone every year, so clearly the chances are pretty small. If you view a one in two million chance of death from an activity as unacceptable risk, you certainly shouldn't ride in a motor vehicle -- your risk of dying is 300 per two million motor vehicles in the United States.So let's say you have plans to go camping in Yellowstone this week. Should you go? Of course that's up to you. If you are going to spend the whole time sitting awake and terrified, then probably you aren't going to have a very good time and it's not worth it. There's nothing wrong with you if that describes you. It describes me pretty much, and it did before this latest news, too. Our minds are not necessarily very good at sticking with the actual likelihood of something happening when they decide what to be afraid of.
photo copyright istockphoto/judilen
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Girl Dies on Spanish Amusement Park Ride
A 15-year-old girl died Saturday evening at the Tibidabo amusement park in Barcelona, Spain when a mechanical arm on "El Pendulo" ride broke and the basket holding passengers fell onto another ride below. Three other people were injured, two of them seriously.
It happens that on Saturday evening I was at the home of some good friends who are major theme park enthusiasts. In fact, we spent part of the evening watching excerpts from "Bert the Conqueror," a show on the Travel Channel featuring a man who travels the country trying out various challenges and local thrills. Very often this includes riding scary amusement park rides, and that's mostly what we watched last night. In an episode where he visits Cedar Point
(which is as close to a "local" theme park as we have here in the Ann Arbor area), he sizes up a particularly terrifying ride and says, "They have regulations, right? It has to be safe."That line was ringing through my head as I read about the Barcelona accident today. Those of us who enjoy the occasional thrill ride rely on the fact that reputable amusement parks inspect their rides carefully. That is what enables us to enjoy the death-defying feeling of the rides while still being confident that we will, in fact, defy death.
El Pendulo was inspected in June and judged to be safe. Obviously, by yesterday, it wasn't safe anymore. This is exactly what is not supposed to happen at amusement parks. If death on thrill rides was all that common, very few people would ride them. The industry relies on this sort of thing not happening for its very existence.
This young lady is not the first person ever to die on a ride at an amusement park, and she unfortunately will not, most likely, be the last. So where does that leave folks who like amusement parks? How do we manage to get on the more extreme rides and enjoy them when something like this can happen?
There are two possibilities. First, we can decide that it's not worth it, or that a particular type of ride which we perceive as being particularly dangerous is not worth it. There are rides I still won't go on because my mom wouldn't let me go on them following an accident when I was a child. I know that was 30 years ago and changes have been made, but the imprint that certain rides are dangerous remains.
The second possibility is that we can take this single incident and add it to the mental model we have of amusement park safety. If we do that well, we recognize that a single death does not tilt the scales all that much when you consider the millions of people who don't die at amusement parks every day. Death on a thrill ride is possible, but it is not likely. According to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, the chances of a serious injury on a "fixed-site" (as opposed to mobile carnival) ride is about 1 per 21 million rides taken.
The second possibility may be the logical one, but it is not the one you should expect of yourself the day after an accident like this. That's particularly true if you are contemplating riding a ride very similar to El Pendulo, if you're at the Tibidabo park, and certainly if you witnessed the accident. Trauma messes up our gut instincts about what is possible and what is likely. It's very natural to start out going with the first possibility -- deciding that it isn't worth it. Most of us move to the second, perhaps without the actual statistics but with a general understanding, in time.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Why are there So Many Freak Accidents on Independence Day?
A quick flip through the news from this weekend reveals the following:
- Two dozen people were injured and one killed by stampeding horses at a parade in Iowa.
- A Litchfield, Illinois man was killed in a glider accident.
- In Santa Clarita, California, a woman was killed and several others injured when a car ran a red light, collided with another vehicle and careened into a crowd of fireworks spectators.
- A man died in a jet ski crash on Waneta Lake in Wisconsin.
- A boy in Molalla, Oregon was run over by a parade float.
- A girl in Platte City, Missouri was injured when a bowl of "black eyed pea" fireworks exploded.
- A platform at the Aspen ski resort gave way and sent five people tumbling down. Two were injured.
- A firework at a professional display in Palmyra, Pennsylvania misfired and went into a crowd of spectators.
- A man in Long Island blew his arm off with illegal fireworks.
- A boat crash on Lake Pleasant in Arizona killed one and injured four.
- A deck collapsed in Alabama, killing one and injuring six.
- In San Juan, County, New Mexico, two were killed and three injured in a shooting.
The short answer is that Independence Day is not inherently dangerous, any more than Easter or Flag Day or Arbor Day or, for that matter, next Tuesday. There is no mystical force at work causing mayhem on the 4th of July, and chances are that in other countries there are no more problems on July 4th than on any other day. We are, however, more likely to associate accidental deaths on the holiday with the holiday, rather than with the fact that a certain number of accidents happen every day.
In addition, the way Americans choose to commemorate the holiday contributes to a spike in accidents. There are a number of factors that make July 4th the perfect day to have something unusual happen, and lend themselves to certain types of problems that aren't as common on other days.
Factor #1: Crowds
We tend to pay more attention to incidents that involve large numbers of people. Not surprisingly, this type of incident can only happen when there are large numbers of people together. Parades, fireworks and other large celebrations draw big groups of people, increasing the chances that an accident that affects more than one or two people will happen. Crowds of people are also heavy, increasing the number of accidents caused by whatever they are standing on collapsing.
Factor #2: Explosives
Things that explode are inherently dangerous. People who work with things that explode are more likely to be injured. People who don't know what they are doing with things that explode are particularly at risk. On July 4, our tradition of fireworks lends itself to accidents, particularly among amateurs.
Factor #3: Nice Weather and a Day Off
Summer weather and a day off from work means that people are taking part in recreation activities that are not as common other times, such as jet skiing, boating and hang gliding. The more people there are doing these things, the more chances there are for an accident. Looking at it another way, you will note that boating accidents are relatively unusual on Christmas, and skating accidents are rare on July 4.
Factor #4: Alcohol
People drink on the 4th of July, and anything that can go wrong is more likely to go wrong when alcohol is involved.
Factor #5: Children
This is a family holiday, and we encourage children to participate in a big way. Any accident involving a child gets our attention, and the more kids there are out and about, particularly around fireworks, boats, crowds and adults drinking alcohol, the more chances a kid will be hurt.
So, what should you do on July 4th? Does it make sense to stay home and hide? That depends on what you mean by sense. Staying home and hiding is often, but not always, the safest thing to do. It also greatly reduces your quality of life. We all choose to do things that are riskier than that. On July 4th, we all choose to do them all at once. A little common sense about fireworks, keeping an eye on the kids and keeping alcohol consumption down could go a long way to keeping everyone safe.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Are You at Risk for a Violent Death?
The Centers for Disease Control has just come out with a comprehensive 16 state review of violent deaths in 2007. This may sound about as thrilling to you as watching pain peel off a barn (or perhaps a comprehensive study of paint peeling off a barn), but there's actually some very interesting information contained in this report. In particular, it challenges some of our assumptions about people who die violently. This is interesting (at least to me), because part of what helps us deal with the threat of violence is convincing ourselves that it happens to other people. On the flip side, to the extent that we believe it does happen to people like us, it raises our anxiety level quite a bit. This report allows us to work off of facts rather than assumptions, which is generally a good thing.
One of the first things that lept out at me from this report is the fact that you are less likely to die by murder than you are by suicide. I guess as I think about it that makes sense, but it certainly wasn't my gut-level prediction. Most of us see suicide as a risk we can avoid -- we probably overestimate how much this is true. We see murder as something that just happens, and that scares us. But this report tells us that the thing we think we can control is actually more likely. This may give some of us a (perhaps false) sense of security.
Another thing that struck me is that people who die by both suicide and homicide have about a 1 in 3 chance of having alcohol in their system when they die. People who kill themselves, however, are about 250% more likely than people who are murdered to have other drugs in their systems. Again, these are risks that we can control -- don't drink, don't do drugs, and maybe you won't die.
Not surprisingly, people who kill themselves have a very high incidence of mental illness, with more than 40% of them having a depressed mood before they died. What might surprise you is that about 30% of people who die by suicide are taking antidepressants, compared to about 4% of those who are murdered. Does this mean that antidepressants cause suicide? Not necessarily. People who are depressed are at risk for suicide. People who are depressed are also more likely to be taking antidepressants. That doesn't mean antidepressants are a risk for suicide.
Perhaps the most startling finding in this study has to do with the age at which people are most likely to be murdered. The highest risk age group for men is 20-24. Men are, overall, 3 times more likely to be murdered than women, so, generally, being female is a protective factor. What is shocking (at least to me) is that the highest risk age group for females is less than one year. The time of a woman's life when she is most likely to be murdered is in infancy. She is twice as likely to be murdered then as when she is in her 20's. That very much goes against the core belief many of us have that children don't die and that people don't hurt children. Apparently, they really do.
Finally, the look at precipitating factors for homicide in this report brings home rather strongly that murder is not, in fact, random. For men, the most common precipitating factor to their murder is an argument or other conflict about something other than money. For women, more than half of murders are the result of violence by their partner. Arguments about money or property, gang violence, and even drug violence are much less likely. About 1/3 of murders happen as part of another crime such as robbery. Random violence accounts for less than one percent of homicides.
So, now that you've read all about the peeling paint, why does this matter? It matters because we make assumptions every day about what is dangerous in the world and what is not. We pick which neighborhoods we will or won't walk through at night and how many locks to have on our doors based on our perception that the danger will come to us if we make the wrong choices. Certainly, doing things like these lessens our risk. We spend much less time and psychological energy, however, thinking about how to protect ourselves from the much more likely dangers -- the people we live with or spend time with, the substances we consume, and our own mental health. Maybe it's time for a little attitude adjustment.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Ann Arbor Firebug? The answer is yes.
Two weeks ago in this space I asked if Ann Arbor had a firebug. There had been several suspicious fires overnight, including one that killed a 22 year-old resident. The causes of those fires are still under investigation. Last night, there were four car fires in the area surrounding the University of Michigan campus, all of them intentionally set. Yes, Virginia
, we have a serial arsonist. We often find ourselves saying, about things like this, "It has to stop before someone gets hurt." But someone already has gotten hurt, and whether that particular fire was set intentionally or not, you might think that the death of Renden LeMaster would cause whoever is responsible for those that are arson to think twice. Apparently you would be wrong. It is way outside of my paygrade to try to explain why someone would do this, especially given that someone has died, but obviously someone is.
So, what does this mean for people who live in Ann Arbor? How do you live life knowing that there is someone intentionally burning things next to buildings (all of the fires have started in cars or trash adjacent to inhabited apartment buildings or houses) and that not only could this be dangerous, we know it already is? Should you be scared, and if so, how scared is appropriate?
This situation lends itself to a feeling of helplessnes. Someone out there, we don't know who, may or may not be about to do something which may affect us, and if they do it's really bad but there's no way to know. The antidote to helplessness is action, and so this is a good time to follow the adage, "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best."
Now is the time for Ann Arbor residents to do what we all know we should do anyway but few of us actually do, and that is develop and practice a safety plan for our homes for fires. Every person in every home should know at least two ways out of the house and where to meet after evacuating. We should check our smoke detectors
every 6 months. We should tell our children to drop to the floor and crawl when they hear the alarm and feel the door before opening it, and also that, no matter how scared they are, never ever to hide during a fire -- kids naturally do this, and firefighters report that a large number of child fatalities in fires occur in closets and under beds where the rescuers cannot find the children.Once that is out of the way, it's time to try to put things into some perspective. Ann Arbor has a population of about 114,000 people, and thus far five of them have had their home burned down in the current string of fires, with one fatality. That is five and one too many respectively, and obviously this is not a small deal for those people. However, it also represents four thousandths of one percent of the population. The chances of any one family being the victim here are still incredibly small.
So, how scared should you be? However scared you are. Some people will have no concerns, and some will have a lot. That depends on you, your temperment, your past experience with fires, your overall anxiety level, and many other factors. However scared you are, that's how scared you are. There is no point stressing over whether you should be stressed. Put that to the side, do what you can do to keep yourself and your family safe, remind yourself of the tiny odds involved, and give yourself a break. Eventually, this will pass. In the meantime, we're all entitled to feel a little nervous, or not.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine
At least seven coal miners are dead and nineteen more are missing in Montcoal, West Virginia tonight after an explosion tore through the mine at about 3 o'clock this afternoon. The governor of West Virginia is out of the state but is returning. The congressman from that part of the state is on the scene. President Obama has made a statement offering his support. It is not clear from media reports whether it is believed that the missing miners could have survived the blast.
Coal mining is hard, dangerous work. Those of us with a mild phobia about, say, tunnels, can tell you that the idea of being deep underground in one and chipping at the walls does not seem like a safe thing to do. Seventy years ago, a thousand miners might have died in a given year in the United States. Last year there were just 35 mining deaths.
In other parts of the world, safety standards may not be as stringent, and the result is more accidents and more fatalities. Just last week an unfinished mine in Xiangning, China flooded, trapping 153 miners. Yesterday, 115 were rescued after surviving for a week eating bark and glucose packets dropped through a pipe into the mine. They are the lucky ones -- 2,631 miners died in China last year. There are, of course, more miners in China than in the U.S., but the death rate per 100 miners is still about 50% higher in China.
Everyone who lives in a community surrounding a mine knows that something like the explosion today could happen at any time. You might wonder, then, why people keep going down into the mines or letting their loved ones become miners. It truly isn't that difficult to understand, however, when you put it in some context. The death rate in U.S. mines is about 1 per 666.7 million hours worked.
The name "Montcoal" probably gives some insight into the role that mining plays in that portion of West Virginia. In mining communities, the mines are very often the largest employer by far. Sons follow their fathers and grandfathers into the mines, and kids plan on becoming a miner when they finish school. Mining is steady work in those communities that have coal veins below them, and steady work is often hard to come by outside the mines and the businesses that support the mining operations.
All of that is little comfort to the people of Montcoal tonight. Their family members are missing, and it doesn't much matter if they were paid well or if the chances of something happening to them personally were tiny. Tonight it feels like 100%. It is unfortunate that there are probably very skilled crisis teams ready to assist Montclair -- unfortunate because that means this sort of thing has happened before, and people have learned from that experience. Until those 19 miners are accounted for, however, all anyone can do is wait.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Does it Matter Whose Fault it Is?
This week, a lot of threats, epithets, and mild vandalism has been hurled in the general direction of Democratic members of Congress. Most of this has either been directly related to anti-healthcare-bill protests or presumed to be linked to them. Among those who condemn this state of affairs, there seem to be two schools of thought. One holds that these actions represent the worst of the worst of the fringe on the right, and those responsible are simply doing what they do. The other holds that the rhetoric by more mainstream pundits and politicians who oppose the bill has been sufficiently over the top that it has given approval to or incited this behavior.
The question of whose fault this is is largely being treated as a political question, but does it have a practical application? If someone gets hurt or, God forbid, killed, does it matter to the survivors whether they were encouraged or incited or just acting on their own? I actually think it does, but perhaps not for the reasons you would expect.
Let's imagine, for the sake of argument, that someone shoots up a congressional office in protest of the bill. No one is injured (by a miracle) but there are a lot of very scared, very traumatized staffers. There is a certain amount of processing that all of them will need to go through to make their peace with what happened. They will have to get to a point where they are willing to go back to work and not cower under their desks in fear. That will be true no matter whether they perceive the shooter as a lone crazy person or as the inevitable outcome of a larger attitude and type of rhetoric.
What it will take to get them there, however, will be different. If the shooter is a lone crazy person, then they need to come to terms with the fact, which we all know but don't think about, that there are crazy people out there and one of them can come to get you at any moment. They'll have to restore their sense that such events are, in the scheme of things, unlikely, in order for them to return to something like real functioning.
If the blame lies in pundits and politicians inciting people to violence, however, the game changes. Now they must come to terms with the fact that there are people who are motivated to do something like this by rhetoric which is still going on. Even if the incident makes everyone stop being inflammatory, the people who were so incendiary in the first place are still around, and their words are still out there. They will actually have no idea at all how many of those people are still waiting in the wings. Indeed, having survived an attack they may, perhaps correctly, believe they are more likely to be targeted by other such people. And the blame they direct towards those responsible will get in the way of them accepting the fact that this happened in the first place.
I think most reasonable people hope that things calm down, at least as far as racist, homophobic, or violent actions go. I hope we can all agree that none of that is good. Throwing around blame for it may score political points, but unless it serves to get people to stop inciting the masses, drawing attention to it may, in the long run, just make everything worse.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Freak Accidents
Robert Jones of Woodstock, Georgia was a 38 year-old pharmaceutical salesman. He was in Hilton Head, South Carolina yesterday on business. Around 6 PM, he was out for a run on the beach, listening to his iPod, when an experimental aircraft making an emergency landing struck and killed him. He leaves a wife and two children. The people on the plane were unharmed.
It appears that the plane started leaking oil and the propeller fell off. The oil got onto the windshield, so the pilot couldn't see. The pilot of the aircraft was still on the beach when the Associated Press interviewed him, but he didn't want to talk. He said,
I've got a lot of issues going on right now. I've got a plane that's all torn up. And I've got a young man that I killed.Who can blame him? Someone should have been running interference between him and the press in the first place.
"I've got a young man that I killed." I don't know about you, but something strikes me as problematic about that statement. Imagine listening to a 911 call where the caller says, "I've got a young man that I killed." What comes to mind is a murderer confessing to a shooting, or perhaps a death that occurred in self-defense. What does not come to mind is an accident.
And that's what this was -- an accident. The pilot did not get up yesterday morning thinking, "I think I'll kill a jogger today." He did not get up saying, "To heck with safety, I'll do what I want." He was trying to save his own life and the life of his passenger when he landed that plane. He didn't aim for Mr. Jones. He hit him by accident.
However, the pilot did hit Mr. Jones, creating a classic example of the type of danger we simply don't bother to worry about. I doubt that Robert Jones got up yesterday morning and thought, "I'll go for a run on the beach after work, but I'd better watch out for crashing airplanes." The way he died was so unlikely that it probably never occurred to him. I never occurred to me before I read about it.
The pilot will have to live with the knowledge that a craft he was in charge of took another person's life. He will need to make peace with a freak accident where, in some sense, he was the freak. Jones' family will have to make peace with him being killed in such a bizarre manner. And the joggers on Hilton Head Beach will need to make peace with their jogging spot, and the fact that, yesterday or not, it's still a pretty safe place to be.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
They're Gunning for Me
Yesterday, at Inskip Elementary School in Knoxville, Tennessee, shortly after school had let out early due to snow, a man shot the Principal and Assistant Principal. One is in critical condition, the other in stable condition. The man arrested is a 4th grade teacher at the school. Details are starting to come out about this guy's career. His contract was not going to be renewed next year. His brother had a restraining order against him. The police have a thick file of complaints that he's filed about others and that they've filed against him. This does not appear to be a stable person. On the other hand, he also briefly held public office when he served on a local Beer Board.
You've often heard me write about how traumatic events interfere with our ability to distinguish what is likely from what is possible. That certainly was the case for me when I read this story. If you had asked me yesterday morning whether it was possible a disgruntled teacher would shoot me in my office, I would have said that I hadn't thought about it, but anything is possible.
When I read about this shooting, however, I immediately felt unsafe. I have made teachers unhappy and not renewed contracts. I know there are people out there who hate me for it. Before yesterday, I had never imagined that they could possibly come after me physically. Now I know.
On the other hand, I know perfectly kind, decent people who have not been renewed for one reason or another. I myself left my first teaching job under a cloud. None of these people would possibly shoot their administrators.
What's hard to remember is that, in fact, I'm no more or less likely to be assaulted at work today than I was last week. The risk to me, or to any other administrator in the country, has not actually changed. What has changed is that we're aware of the possibility. We've had a reason to contemplate a risk that we had no reason to even recognize before. It's possible that I, and other administrators like me, under-estimated the overall danger of our jobs before yesterday, and that this incident will cause us to be more realistic. It's much more likely, however, that our original estimates were pretty good to begin with, and this incident has caused a very unlikely thing to seem much more likely.
In another few days this story will have passed from the news. It won't seem so prominent in my consciousness. I'll probably go back to feeling just as safe as I did before. In the meantime, there are perfectly good and typical reasons why I'm feeling a little more cautious at work today. As long as I'm able to work and the fear doesn't stick around for too long, I know I'm probably OK.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
What Is It About Shark Attacks?
Stephen Schafer, 38, was killed while kiteboarding in Florida yesterday. He was attacked by sharks, apparently at least 2 of them. A lifeguard was able to reach him and pull him to safety while he was still alive and conscious, but he lost consciousness before they reached shore and was pronounced dead at a local hospital. This story made all of the national news outlets and some international ones today, and was the most popular story on Google News.
What is it about this story that is so compelling? It's not just this one -- there have been a number of instances over the years where fatal or near-fatal shark attacks made national headlines. Discovery Channel sponsors "Shark Week" on a regular basis, with a lot of time devoted to shark attacks. "Jaws" is now so much a part of our culture that even people who have never seen it know about it. We are fascinated by the danger of sharks.
The fact of the matter is that fatal shark attacks are really rare. The most fatal shark attacks in a single year ever recorded was 16 in 2000. Less than 5 fatalities a year is more typical. Shark attack fatalities in Florida are even more unusual. Since 1990, there have only been a total of 5 deaths in Florida. Clearly our fascination with shark attacks is not because they represent a major danger to us in our daily lives, even if we swim in the ocean quite a bit.
I would suggest that what pulls us in about stories like this one is the interaction between humans and animals. In most places in the world, people do not put themselves in situations where dangerous animals can randomly attack them. Few of us, for example, go hang out near a pack of lions. If someone is killed by a lion, therefore, we don't really identify with the risk that person took.
Sharks, however, are different. We willingly place ourselves in the ocean with some frequency. When someone is attacked by a shark, we can imagine that it could happen to us, and we are alarmed by the appearance that there isn't much we can do to avoid it. It's a random risk that we take when we swim.
The death of Mr. Schafer is awful, and that rarity and awfulness is also part of what makes the story sensationalistic. I just hope we don't lose sight of reality while we're remarking on this incident. The chances of this happening to us -- to anyone -- are incredibly small.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Toyotaphobia Sweeps the Nation
If you've been in a completely non-industrialized part of the world for the last month or two, you might have missed that Toyota has recalled about 9 million vehicles due to unintended acceleration problems and problems with pedals getting caught in floor mats. They have also stopped manufacturing or selling the affected models until a fix can be put in place. This is disastrous news for a company that has built its business on reliability.
Pundits have been all over the news discussing Toyota's future. On Marketplace this afternoon, one commentator said that it can take an entire generation -- 20 years or so -- for a company to recover from a problem like this. The host commented that an informal poll around the office showed that no one was going to buy the Toyotas even after they were fixed.
I understand why the brand has taken a hit. I understand that you can't turn a profit if you can't manufacture and sell your product. What seems unreasonable, however, is the sheer level of fear this is causing people.
Based on the mass anti-Toyota feelings around the country, you might think that hundreds or even thousands of people have been seriously injured or killed in accident involving these defects. People are treating their Toyotas as if they might turn on them at any moment, so the actual numbers involved might surprise you. For the floor mat problem, the NTSB has identified 2 incidents that caused 5 deaths. For the accidental acceleration problem, the NTSB has identified no fatalities at all. Other organizations say there have been 2,000 incidents with 19 deaths in the acceleration defect. So, at worst, we're talking about 24 deaths over up to 10 years.
I don't mean to discount the tragedy that has befallen the families and loved ones of these 24 people. Any traumatic death is awful, particularly when it is avoidable. I wouldn't be in this line of work if it weren't. You might feel that this number of deaths represent an unacceptable risk. If you do, it might be time for a little reality check. More than 43,600 people died in motor vehicle accidents in 2006. If Toyotas present a completely unacceptable risk to the point that you will never drive one again, then, you probably shouldn't be driving at all, since driving itself is much, much more risky than any one brand.
We are sucked into this recall and its hype because it's Toyota and because it affects so many cars and hence so many consumers. Certainly if we can avoid another 24 deaths in these vehicles, we should. We shouldn't, however, confuse a big story with a big risk. We do riskier things than drive a Toyota every day.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
California's Apocalyptic Weather
Yesterday afternoon, a headline appeared on Google News that read, "Parts of LA Under Tornado Warning." This did not particularly grab my attention, so I was surprised when, a few minutes later, a list of the most popular stories also included this one. What, I wondered, could possibly be so interesting about a tornado warning in Louisiana? Then I looked more closely at the sources for the various articles and realized that, in this case, LA was not the postal abbreviation for the state of Louisiana, but the acronym for Los Angeles.
Context is everything. I read the headline as being about Louisiana simply because it was much more plausible. Louisiana has tornadoes. Southern California has earthquakes and wildfires. That's how the world works. If I was thrown for a loop by yesterday's weather in Los Angeles, I can only imagine what Angelenos themselves are thinking. Today is bringing another storm and mudslides with attendant evacuations.
Storms like this are never fun, no matter where you are or how often they come around. But if you live in an area that gets them a lot, tornado warnings and the like become a part of life. Even here in southeast Michigan, where we have at most three tornado warnings a year, school children drill for them and my own kids know exactly where the "safe room" in our house is. We are used to severe thunderstorms and flooded basements in the spring and summer, and bitter cold and snow in the winter. That's how the world works.
A tornado in Los Angeles, on the other hand, feels about as likely as a major earthquake in Michigan -- it could happen, but nobody thinks it will. After the Eureka earthquake I wrote about how whether an earthquake is "big" depends a lot on your previous experience with earthquakes (and of course, little did I know that I'd soon be blogging about another big, much more devastating one). Whether or not a tornado warning feels particularly scary or traumatic, similarly, has a lot to do with whether you have them all the time.
A kid in Los Angeles isn't as likely to know where the safe room is or to have practiced for severe weather in school. On the other hand, my children haven't a clue what to do in an earthquake and would be terrified by even a modest tremblor. So, in addition to being more and less accustomed to certain things, we also are more and less prepared for them. Preparation gives a sense of safety and lessens the traumatic impact of a crisis -- it's much more scary to have a tornado nearby if you first have to figure out what to do and only then can take cover.
We all have expectations for how the world works. The more those expectations are violated, and the less we are prepared, the more traumatizing an incident is going to be. So if it's all the same to Mother Nature, let's keep the earthquakes in Los Angeles and the tornadoes in Michigan. That's the way the world works.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Death at the Marathon
The last time someone died during the Detroit marathon was in 1994, when a 42 year-old runner died of a heart attack. That is until yesterday, when 3 people died in a span of 16 minutes while running the half marathon. They weren't running together, and the weather wasn't hot -- it was in the 40s here in Michigan yesterday.
This is troubling on a number of levels. First of all, we really don't think of runners as people in danger of dying. People who are in good enough shape to run a half marathon are not supposed to be in bad enough shape that it will kill them. This seems to counter the natural order of things.
Add to that the fact that two of these runners were young. One, Jon Fenlon, was 26 and one, Daniel Langdon, was 36. The third, Rick Brown, was 65, and while his death is not any less tragic, on a gut level it does not offend our sensibilities quite as much. Again on a gut level, 65 year old people do die from time to time. I'm sure that if I knew Brown I would know him to be healthy and vigorous, and my worldview would be shaken by his sudden death. But I didn't have the good fortune to know him and so, perhaps heartlessly, it doesn't bother me nearly as much. Fenlon and Langdon, on the other hand, were not only in good enough shape to be running this race, they were both younger than I am. That's not how it's "supposed" to work.
There is a real temptation as well to see a nefarious pattern in these deaths. After no deaths for 15 years, three in 16 minutes sounds like a lot. I went looking for some data, and found references to two studies, one of the London Marathon and one of the New York Marathon. In the London study, the risk of death was found to be 1 in 67,000 runners. In New York, it was 1 in 320,000. That's a big difference, but for the sake of argument, let's take London number.
There were somewhat less than 20,000 people in yesterday's Detroit marathon. At that rate, we should have about 1 death every 3 or 4 years in Detroit, so three in a day is a lot. The odds of that happening are about 3/10 of one percent. On the other hand, if you look at the stats since 1994, there have been 4 deaths in 15 years, which is just about right. It's all how you look at the numbers. And the fact that the three who died yesterday died in rapid succession isn't really surprising at all -- they were all between an hour and a half and two hours into the race. If you're going to have a health issue, it's reasonable to assume it's more likely once you're a fair amount into the race.
Any death during a marathon is horrifying. If it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone. It's just important to keep in mind how unlikely it was to happen to them in the first place.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Meet the Quarterback
- Naomi Zikmund-Fisher
- is a clinical social worker, former school Principal and a Crisis Consultant for schools and community organizations. You can learn more about her at www.SchoolCrisisConsultant.com
Subscribe
Posts
All Comments