I found the show to be similar to a Time Magazine cover story I posted about recently on - Road rage--scaring people off the roads? in the advocacy forum.

Time mentioned, as did Stossel, that after 9/11 people took to the roads instead of the air. For the next 3 months there were an additional 1,000 deaths per month above regular deaths on the roads.

In that article, they have a nice graphic of what kills people each year and what we worry about, is often not what kills us.

Accidents kill only 4% of people dying and motor vehicle accidents make up almost half of that total. Deaths on bicycles are a tiny slice (less than 1%) on par with falling out of bed and choking on food. Far more prevelant are choking on other objects (more people die choking on pens than crashing on bicycles here in Canada), dying in a fire, or falling down stairs.

Much larger in the picture (almost half of all deaths) are from conditions cycling helps prevent, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases.

So people perceive one thing while reality paints a different picture.

In the thread, - Culture of Fear - I started a long time ago, I mentioned a very similar magazine article in Macleans Magazine entitled, "THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE BAD NEWS - SARS, West Nile, Mad Cow--yes, it's tough out there, but we're making progress."

same thing again. Recurring theme, that fear thing.