Bad Copy of the Day Award

This isn't necessarily bad copy, at least not on the level of Bombs Over Your Eyeball, but it still made me stop and say, "Oh." It's from a personal injury/criminal trial lawyer.

"Among all children under the age of fourteen killed in DUI accidents in 2000, nearly half were passengers in a car driven by someone who had been drinking."

This is what I call a total non-statistic. It sounds a lot like a statistic -- it names a group of people, subdivides it, and assigns a quality to the subdivided group. But what is it really saying? That 50% of young DUI victims are in cars driven by a drunk adult. Presumably the other half of young DUI victims die in crashes caused by a driver in another car.

We can therefore conclude from this brilliant statistic that 100% of children killed in DUI accidents are in cars at the time. Note to self: do not retain a lawyer with facts this bad.