Streets here not as deadly as they seem, on page one of the Metro section of today’s Chron. Next week, a headline about how the smog isn’t so bad once you get used to it.
In case you’re curious, by the way, the story is about auto-pedestrian fatalities – Houston ranks a not-as-bad-as-we-thought 41st nationally, with 2.71 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 population for the three-year period 1998-2000 – and not street crime. It’s moderately hard to believe we have enough pedestrians to account for that many pedestrian deaths, but there you have it.
You’ve nailed the problem with that piece. The Comical compares our numbers to other (pedestrian friendly) cities, and concludes we’re not doing so bad — when those numbers don’t take into account the much smaller (relatively speaking) number of pedestrians here. Typical Comical silliness.