So… That was quite a surprise, here’s the link to the statistics: Link
188 fatalities out of nearly 24k accidents don’t qualify as ‘most cases end deadly’. I don’t want to speculate as to how someone can misread a statistic that significantly while writing an article for a public service news site. But the damage of such false narratives is considerable.
My literacy of the German language is almost nil, but it seems patently unreasonable for an author or journalist to believe that over half of the incidents involving a fairly common activity would be fatal. Now, I should say that I’m basing this on prior knowledge of the German e-bike/pedelec market, where over half the bikes sold there at electric. What this implies is that of the sizable population of the country, of the subset which are riding bicycles, and further the subset which ride pedelecs, and still yet the subset which get into a collision or other incident, that somehow it’s believable that over half will die?
That cannot possibly be true, does not pass the sniff test, and isn’t even passable as a joke. If it were true, there would be scores of dead riders left and right, in every city in the country, daily. I suspect it would overtake (pun intended) the number of murders in the fairly safe country.
Compare this with parachuting, which would be more sensible for a headline of “most accidents are fatal”, I’m shocked that no one in the publication chain of command noticed such a gross error. While it’s true that some statistics are bona fide shocking – American shooting deaths come to mind – this is a very bizarre instance of confirmation bias, since no one noticed the error.
I was led to believe that cycling in German is “normalized but marginalized”, but this type of error speaks to some journalistic malpractice.
ZDF is a public service broadcaster, but not a governmental broadcaster.
As an uneducated Eastern European, what is the difference? Honest question, I come from a political culture where what TASS is doing is normal.
I see at least two criteria:
- financing,
- board.
According to the Wikipedia article about the ZDF:
-
Financing:
- financed by a license fee
- receives income from sponsorships, programming and advertising sales
-
Board:
- Director general - technically independent
- Supervising board - includes 5 representatives of the federal states, 1 of the federal republic of Germany
- Television board - includes 16 representatives of the states of Germany, 2 of the federal republic of Germany, 6 members nominated by the federal states
So, it’s dependent on the government. Means politics could have influence on programmes.
Thanks for the correction, never tried to translate that before. Headline and text edited accordingly
So like the BBC?
It’s crazy how much irrational hate there is for micromobility, I figure it’s mostly fueled by fossil fuel propaganda.
Yes and the auto industry.
The decades of brainwashing from those two industry allow the idea to run perpetually without much help needed.
