[Overpaid Slacker]

John --

I agree with the five suggestions at the end of that editorial, but the reasoning in the first two paragraphs is a bit open-ended for me.

First, it states that the FHwA "caused" a 38% increase in construction zone fatalities, without providing a causal link. OK, there have been FHwA programs, and OK, there has been an increase in fatalities, but correlation is not necessarily causation and there very well might be other reasons, unrelated to FHwA that resulted in increased fatalities.

Second, while there has been a 38% increase in fatalities, the editorial doesn't tell us whether there was, let's say for the sake of argument, a 100% increase in road construction (measured by miles or sites or whatever) comparing 1995 to 2000. In *that* case, then I/we would've expected roughly 1,578 fatalities (789 doubled) and having only 1,093 fatalities would seem to mean that FHwA programs "prevented" almost 500 deaths in work zones. We just don't know from this editorial whether this is the case or not, or whether there are other variables that have moved.

Third, just picking two years for a comparison always makes me suspicious (and I confess I'm too lazy to dig up the statistics for other years) b/c too often the editorial writer will pick the years most convenient to his bias. What if there were "only" 600 deaths in each of 1998, 1999 and 2001? A trend of increasing traffic fatalities in parallel with increased FHwA implementations would be much more convincing, but this editorial doesn't provide any context other than what's convenient.

I think we're of the same mind on the big-picture, but I just wouldn't rely too heavily on that particular editorial as ammunition.

Obviously it's a particularly slow day at the office here.

Best,

JP