Originally Posted by
billyymc
I stopped reading after the irrelevant and misleading statistics in this paragraph:
"The
Times notes that less than half of potential drivers age 19 or younger had a license in 2008, down from nearly two-thirds in 1998. The fraction of 20-to-24-year-olds with a license has also
dropped. And according to
CNW research, adults between the ages of 21 and 34 buy just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, a far cry from the peak of 38 percent in 1985."
Apparently 95% of journalists have never taken a statistics class. None of those statistics prove that people in the age group discussed are buying fewer vehicles than they were at any point in the past. They prove that 1) a smaller percentage have licenses, and 2) 21 to 27 year old adults buy a smaller percentage of NEW vehicles in the U.S. than they did in 1985. Without more information, we have no way of knowing, or even reliably extrapolating a valid conclusion, that those young adults are buying fewer cars than before.
Bad journalist. Bad. Go to your crate.
I'll grant your second point but not your first. Doesn't the fact that fewer have licenses indicate that fewer are driving? That's quite a large drop, from "less than half of potential drivers age 19 or younger had a license in 2008, down from nearly two-thirds in 1998." Also the fact that car marketers are worried about the trend would indicate there's something to it.