KUSI Picked Up Our Story About Deaths and Serious Injuries at Sunset Cliffs for 2018 – But Got It Wrong

Local television and online media station KUSI picked up the OB Rag‘s story from Tuesday about the high number of deaths and serious injuries at Sunset Cliffs during 2018 – and even gave the OB Rag accreditation – which we are grateful for as it is a rare occasion for the Rag to be acknowledged by mainstream media.

But there’s just one problem: they got it wrong.

KUSI‘s headline for their online report blared: “Record number of deaths and injuries at Sunset Cliffs this year.”

Here’s their reference:

According to a local newspaper called the “OB Rag”, more people have died or suffered serious injury in 2018 than any year since 2005. Seven people died from a variety of causes and almost a dozen were seriously injured.

Their only reference on numbers of deaths is the OB Rag story. Yet we never claimed “more people have died or suffered serious injury in 2018 than any year since 2005.” Plus we never made the claim, “Seven people died from a variety of causes and almost a dozen were seriously injured.”

What we did state was:

“the year 2018 has a higher death and seriously injured rate from beautiful but dangerous Sunset Cliffs than the average year since 2005.”

2018 was more dangerous than “the average year since 2005.” Not the worse year since then. And we had concluded:

“By our calculation from posts we have published since last January, there have been seven and possibly eight deaths or seriously injured in and around the Cliffs this year.”

Actually our study over the last 13 years showed 2014 was just as dangerous as this year (so far), but 2015 was worse than this year with 13 deaths or seriously injured, 2016 had eight, and 2017 had eleven.

Now, of course, calling this year as having “record number of deaths and injuries” is a lot more dramatic and “newsworthy”. But hey, we appreciate the shout-out.