Today’s fuel price musings - Rockford area in bottom half of Illinois prices

1 comment July 6th, 2009

It’s true! We have the seventh-highest gasoline prices of Illinois’ 11 metro areas. We’re also tied at 103rd of the nation’s 280 metro areas. Rockford prices have dropped 29 cents since the peak on June 9. As I reported this weekend, our gas prices have abated because the refinery problems that were propping them up have gone away. But don’t get used to it, the writing’s on the wall that $3 and $4 a gallon gas could be back in the next year or two.

Have you gone back to your old driving habits? Or have you permanently switched to a smaller vehicle and taken steps to reduce your driving? I’m enjoying my Honda Fit and the 31-32 mpg I average, and expect the investment to be really worth it in the next few years…

Here are the prices from this morning (courtesy of AAA’s fuelgaugereport.com):

Gasoline: Rockford dropped almost a cent to $2.64 a gallon today. We’re seventh in the state and tied at 103rd of the nation’s 280 metro areas. The Illinois average dropped less than a cent to remain at $2.73 a gallon. The national average dropped almost a cent to $2.61 a gallon. Illinois has the eighth-highest gas prices in the nation, including the District of Columbia.

Diesel: And diesel costs more than gas again. Rockford dropped less than a cent to remain at $2.67 a gallon, a 15-cent increase in the past month. We have the third-highest diesel prices in the state. The state average dropped almost a cent to $2.67, a 10-cent increase in the past month. The national average dropped slightly but stayed at $2.62, a 12-cent increase in the past month. Illinois has the 15th-highest diesel prices in the country, including the District of Columbia.

Do plane and train crashes get disproportionate coverage?

1 comment July 6th, 2009

Eric A. Morris at the Freakonomics blog raise a good question - plane and train crashes make the front pages, but many more people die in auto wrecks.

But what the media very rarely mention is that the carnage on our roads makes these much-hyped accidents look almost trivial. Nine lives is nine too many, but there were 39,800 motor vehicle traffic fatalities in 2008 alone (and that was a good year). At that rate, between the time of the accident, June 22, and the time you are reading this, on average about 1,000 Americans died on our roadways. Yet this rarely merits a mention by the press.

Morris hits the nail on the head in his reasons why - big crashes are rarer and more spectacular, so people talk about them more (and admit it, you talk more about a plane crash than any number of random car crashes).Also, I would note, it’s hard to write about the cumulutive number of road deaths with the same impact as covering a plane crash.

But, whenever I hear people worrying about air safety, I think of the numbers and remember the wise words of Superman - “Statistically speaking, it’s still the safest way to travel.”