I heard this statement and it confused me. The explanation was more red cars have accidents than other cars. But surely that doesn’t translate to “I personally am more likely to have an accident if I drive a red car than a blue car today”? Assuming there’s nothing inherently about red cars that makes them more likely to crash. I’m struggling with the maths theory behind it.
Edit to clarify my question: does the statistic that “red cars have more accidents” translate to the statement that “I, personally, all other things being equal, am more likely to have an accident if I drive a red car than a blue one”?
In: 10
> Assuming there’s nothing inherently about red cars that makes them more likely to crash.
This is the assumption you can’t really make.
Is the statistic corrected for the ratio of red cars overall(as in, maybe more red car accidents happen because there are more red cars)?
This mistake is so common, there’s a [meme subreddit just for maps of things that in reality correlate simply with population count](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeopleLiveInCities/).
Assuming we got that issue out of the way, and red cars are really overall have more accidents, *we still don’t know why*. Is it because more reckless, “sporty” drivers are more likely to get a red car(for a second ignore the fact that this is supposedly the actual reason from the other comment, from the *math alone* we simply don’t know)? Does red somehow confuse other drivers into making mistakes? Do certain common wild animals not see red at all, causing the larger numbers to be from roadkill accidents(which if we correct for, we find that in cities red cars are again no different)?
The key is that *we don’t know* from the math alone. There *IS* a cause clearly(unless whoever made the statistics botched something), but unless we find out what it is, we can’t know if any one case is at risk without knowing if the underlying condition applies to it.
Latest Answers