What’s rare is, reportable

Good points from John Naughton in the Guardian today about the recent Tesla car auto-pilot crash:

For that kind of discussion to be possible, however, mainstream media will have to change the way they report self-driving cars. Every time a Tesla or a Google car is involved in a crash, by all means report it. But also report all the “human error” crashes that occurred on the same day. It’s not rocket science, just balanced reporting

Unfortunately, rare or unusual events are more newsworthy than the mundane, even when the mundane is death. Road deaths are often sadly treated as background, some sort of par for the course.