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Television “news” media, as is often the case, is good at blowing an event out of proportion. In the wake of the Amtrak train crash (and hey, I am totally against train crashes!), we have this:

230 people killed in train accidents in the last year alone. Very scary. — Katie Couric (@katiecouric) May 13, 2015



In contrast with this statement, the bar graph above shows actual transportation fatality risk in the United States, from an article by Ian Savage at Northwestern University. His data end in 2009, but note that the overall tendency is for travel to get safer over time:



Take a look: death rates have gone down for all forms of travel: car, train, airplane, and boat. Despite this, such gore is a staple of news broadcasts. However, maybe some good can yet come of this: there is a major need for repairs and upgrades in U.S. infrastructure. Train travel is one place to invest the dollars.

It is a shame that we are intensely visual primates. Actual threats like climate change are too abstract to appreciate, while on TV we get panic about Malaysian jets and train crashes.