A little online comment brouhaha caught my attention this week as a local news reporter got in a flame war with a commenter on an article in which he wrote that Springfield’s murder numbers for 2013 might have to be revised upwards because a child’s death may be recategorized as a homicide. In response to some ad hominem attacks the reporter wrote that “(t)he perception that Springfield is more deadly than other 413 municipalities is reality.”
Springfield is many times more populous than any other community in the “413”, has the most and the largest major hospitals, and has the most murders in western Massachusetts and so, on many levels, most of which are fairly meaningless, the statement is true.
Of course, what the reporter means to imply is that the city is disproportionately deadly and dangerous. This is actually not true. As I have pointed out many times and in many ways, and as the data demonstrates, if you want to point to the place which is the most disproportionately deadly (regionally or nationally)it is the two lane rural highway, or the four lane suburban stroad.
As another in my “exercise in futility” series I present…as many stroadway deaths in two months in western Massachusetts as an entire year of murders in the City of Homes (Including not a single death in Springfield…though we do have a stroad or two…more on that to come):
