I don’t often cheer out loud while reading the Sun Journal’s editorials (or anyone else’s) but I was moved to cheer, hoot, applaud and then write in response to “Odd obsession with deaths on roller coasters” (July 23).

As a math teacher (I teach elementary education majors at UMF) I’m constantly frustrated by people’s inability to compare risks: the smoker who won’t ever ride an airplane, the driver who fears every minority pedestrian but thinks nothing of driving 10 miles after a couple of beers — and doesn’t wear a seat belt because he thinks it’s better in an accident to be “thrown clear.”

But people can be forgiven for not being able to compare things that are highly unlikely — one in ten thousand looks a lot like one in a million. The media and the education system, however, have a responsibility to give people a clear, accurate and useful picture of the world.

Thank you again for helping to do that job.

Paul J. Gies, Dryden

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