…
Over a 15-year period, 6,253 cars crashed into 7-Eleven storefronts in the U.S. – an average of 1.14 per day.
7-Eleven apparently fought in court to withhold that data from the public.
“They have not been producing that information for many, many years,” Rogers said, “and that’s what’s important about this case - getting this information out about how frequently this happens.”
Rob Reiter is co-founder of the Storefront Safety Council. He was retained as an expert by Carl’s attorneys in this case.
“If you install bollards, you pretty much solve that problem,” he said of the danger.
Reiter advocates for safety bollards or protective barriers being placed in front of storefronts – especially those with parking lots that face the front door.
…
Seems like one of those facts that uses the law of large numbers to fake a point.
Like how if you have 50 people in a room, there’s a 97% chance that two people share a birthday, therefore certain birthdays are more likely.
6,253 sounds like a lot, but there are a lot of storefronts, too. How many of them happened at the same store? How many were a result of drunk driving vs driver error vs some other confounding factor? Ar 7-11 stores more likely than other storefronts to be the scene of a crash?
Bollards are cheap, so by all means put them in the requirements. Or point the parking away from the storefront.
If people are driving with appropriate skill and care, the number driving into large, well-lit buildings should be approximately zero per year. It sounds like you’re willing to excuse a lot of bad driving
If people are driving with appropriate skill and care,
Then there would be a lot of road laws and protection devices that become obsolete.
7-Eleven released a statement that read in part: “We are heartbroken by this tragedy…. It is important to note that this unfortunate accident was caused by a reckless driver who pled guilty, and this store followed all local building codes and ordinances.”
“Of course it’s not 7-11’s fault, anyone but us”
Sounds like an argument in favor of mandating bollards to me.
This isn’t a 7/11 specific problem. In my area coffee shops tend to be the most common hit, and many of them seem to be a case of someone putting their car into the wrong gear and driving forward when they meant to reverse.
If they are going to demand that 7/11 needs bollards, then just about any business with a parking lot should need them too.
Roughly 12,600 7/11’s in the US, so a 0.01% chance of any individual 7/11 getting a car on a given day, or a 1 in a thousand chance.
According to this https://slate.com/business/2022/06/car-crash-buildings-how-many.html about a 100 cars crash into buildings each day, so 7/11 makes up 1% of building crashes, but that tracks since a lot of people go to there for quick needs with distracted minds.
I don’t have much of a point, but the statistics don’t paint a some scary point that I think the lawyers are trying to make.
On average, at least
It could be a case where 1 7-Eleven car crash per day is the median, but not the majority, with 0 and 2 or more combined being more than 50%, so they mean (but communicate poorly) that most days have 1 or more cars crash into 1 or more 7-Elevens, but they couldn’t say that most days have 1 car crash into a 7-Eleven. The only additional information that that would give above simply reporting the 1.14 average is that it’s not highly concentrated on a few days, like if 300 of the annual car crashes into 7-Elevens all happened on 7/11 when people jostle over free slurpees.
In short, “average” has too many meanings for its average use.
