fatvegan

This sounds like a job for economacronomics. Some floozy reckons 4WDs are just as safe as other cars because they don't cause more crashes than other cars proportionally to their numbers. The problem is, as Stuart Newstead said, 4WDs are newer than other cars on average, and the drivers are older men (and we all know older men are the best drivers*). And oddly enough, they're more likely to be driven in cities. In rural areas 4WDs are more dangerous.

If you'd done it with econometrics, using very easy to find data, then you'd probably have got a different result. I once saw statistics the relative dangers of new cars versus old cars, and the differences astonished. Yes that's right. They astonished me.

On the more amusing entertaining side, 4WD sales went up 61% between 2000 and 2003. Just before petrol prices shot up. As much as I dislike 4WDs, I enjoy watching people driving around in them when I know they're paying $1.40/litre. Am I a bad person?

• Statistically it's seem to actually be true, which is surprising to me