Saturday 13 October 2007

Lies, damn lies and statistics (4)

"Family wants plastic pen tops ban" after their teenage son choked to death on a plastic pen top.

That is a personal tragedy, but seeing as there must be hundreds of millions of plastic pen tops in this country, and this is the first time in ages that they have killed somebody, I think that we as a society will have to live with that risk.

Hey, 75 children are killed by their parents every year and a further 150 children are killed in car crashes/collisions.

Shall we ban parents and cars as well?

3 comments:

LFB_UK *The Legend* said...

I am almost sure that all pen tops, well the BIC and corona ones had to have a hole in the top to stop this from happening?

What type of pen was it??

Mark Wadsworth said...

No idea!

No doubt the EU will set up a joint working party together with regional offices and area co-ordinators to look into issuing a twenty page set of regulations that will inadvertently make clothes pegs illegal or something.

JuliaM said...

The report I read didn't mention the manufacturer, but did confirm that it was the 'hole in the top' type. The bit that you use to put it in your pocket got caught, causing a 'fishhook' effect, apparently.

A one in a million chance. No need for any further Government regulation.