When Politics Ignore Reality

So the Citizen is a resident of the state of Illinois -- what pride one takes for being in a state where the last governor was indicted for corruption, and the current one, the one who replaced the last and swore to be "clean", is also under investigation for corruption. Where the leadership in the state's biggest city is in the middle of a federal investigation into corruption, for trading jobs for political gain. The proud state of Illinois!
Let's get specific. The state has now passed a law, trumpeted by the Governor as a tool to protect "the lives of construction workers" who are "imperiled by speeders speeding in construction zones", that spends millions to put vans with cameras at each construction zone in order to impose new, high penalties on anyone "speeding" in those zones. Again, the purpose our politicians claim is to "save lives", specifically the lives of the construction workers.
So, what is a curious citizen to do with that? The premise is simple. This law makes sense if the following are true: construction workers have died in construction zones; said workers have died because of being hit or by cause of speeding cars. What happens to the solution, if the problem is shown not to exist in the first place -- if the aforementioned "these must be true" items... aren't true?
The Chicago Tribune cites the studies that showed 24 deaths in construction zones last year (2005) in Illinois. That's 24 deaths for all the literally billions of miles driven in the state of Illinois by all vehicles (billions of miles: every car's mileage added together to get the total drive miles in the state during a year's time). We can argue whether 24 deaths against the totality of the driven miles makes sense in and of itself elsewhere. Let's stick with those 24 for now.
So, the solution makes sense if those 24 are all constructions workers who died in construction zones -- right? Turns out the press and our politicians are playing fast and loose with the reality of that number. Of the 24 fatalities in construction zones, only 2 - TWO! - were construction workers. Some 20 of the remaining 22 were drunk drivers -- no construction workers involved, and no law is going to stop idiots who drive drunk from killing themselves.
Okay. So we're down to 2 construction workers killed in a construction zone for the entire year 2005. TWO! Keep looking -- because that's still not the whole truth. It turns out that NEITHER of those two construction workers were wearing the proper and required orange reflective vests.
Okay. So a law that imposes penalties on speeders will at the very most affect... 2 deaths per year, using the # of deaths in the last year as the basis for doing anything at all. While any death is regrettable, it is ludicrous over-reaction to react the way the state is. Our politicians have played this up (with the press being completely in their laps, only driving the hype) as something catastrophic, as though construction workers were being killed so regularly that we have to go to this sort of draconian length to "protect them". Unfortunately for the politicians, that isn't the reality. Unfortunately for the citizens and passers-by in Illinois, the reality is completely unimportant.

The politicians have created a "problem" that they can look good "solving", and the press has stood by silently and let them get away with it (again).

Quick: if you are actually interested in saving lives, which would be a better target for your efforts and for millions of dollars of taxpayer funds -- addressing 2 actual deaths in a year's time, or addressing something that causes literally hundreds and thousands of deaths each year? Logic is pretty simple -- you should address the larger problem, because the smaller problem is utterly miniscule (as compared to the # of hours for the # of constructions workers in construction zones each year, set against the volume of miles driven by all drivers). So... why are we spending millions to address what at most were 2 deaths last year... instead of addressing the things that cause more deaths?

Here's a shocker: if we specifically address drunk driving, we take 20 of the 24 deaths last year and address them, instead of addressing the 2. And we'd be addressing a very real problem, because there were far more than 20 total deaths caused by drunk drivers last year - it just happens that only 20 of that total occurred in construction zones.

Of course, that would require our politicians to address actual, real, tangible problems that are HARD instead of shooting at the low-hanging fruit and wasting taxpayer time and money.

Who is the Citizen the most angry at? The Press. The Press should've taken the statistics apart and revealed the truth to the citizens instead of just parotting the hype. They should have said, hm, how many construction workers died in construction zones last year? Is it a number that actually rises to the level of being a problem that the politicians have argued... or are they just spewing hot air around a problem they could "spin" into a "crisis" and then look good solving? Instead, we get... nothing. Hype. No inquiring minds, no Press to point out the bad policy that laws like these are.

The Citizen expects the worst from politicians, especially over the past few years -- and he's come to expect that from the Press. But it's still worth pointing out when both continue to fail the public by wasting time on small issues when they could be saving MORE lives by addressing real, substantial problems. We don't need them to manufacture a mountain of a crisis from a tiny anthill of a reality -- there are plenty of real mountains out there for them to work on. They won't, because that would require actual work, and it would require actually taking a stand -- and Lord knows our current crop of politicians are averse to taking anything resembling a stand that might affect their ability to get re-elected.

Sad.