Yesterday, HuffingtonPost ran this cast of characters you can expect to hear about in SuperFreakonomics. It was accompanied by a video preview in which Dubner’s juggling practice pays off and Levitt wonders why college students, if they’re so altruistic in the lab, never give him money in the subway:
A SuperFreakonomics Video Preview
TAGS: SuperFreakonomics
and 
. You can also watch it on 
The stat, “walking drunk is 8 times more dangerous than driving drunk”, is supposed to make people think twice about walking or driving home when their intoxicated?
I would bet that study was flawed. You easily can pull such data from the end effect… e.g. polling the patients in a hospital emergency room on a weekend night, asking them if they were walking or driving home. I doubt that a researcher polled all the people walking home that DIDN’T get into accidents. Or that they checked the mean blood alcohol percents of both walking & driving groups and those that were or were not in an accident….
People were are too falling-on-their-face drunk to drive, i.e. are physically incapable of driving, usually attempt to walk home, if within walking distance. This one example alone shows how the sample can have bias error.
Perhaps my intuition is wrong on this, but I’ve been drunk plenty of times and know that when I’m within walking distance of home –> I tend to drink more because I know I don’t have to drive back. It is safer to walk than to drive. I’d be a great danger to many if I drove when I’m obviously drunk.
In short, I thought the “8 times more dangerous” stat quote was obviously flawed and was of the type that you guys debunked instead of propagated.
Kudos for pointing out the problems inherent in consuming beef, but why such an impractical solution!!!!?
People might hear that and go huh, but do little. You could instead replace some beef meals with vegetarian meals, or even chicken, and do real good.