Yet another innumerate journalist...

Pico Iyer writing for the NYTimes has this to say:

Air travel has never been safer than it is right now — and one of the casualties of 9/11 has been our belief that the affluent parts of the world are safer than the desperate parts. These days, if anything, thanks to terrorist logic, the opposite may be true. Besides, statistics have always shown that we are most in risk within a half-mile of our homes: I, 20 years ago, took my holidays in war-shadowed Nicaragua and El Salvador, Revolutionary Cuba and the Philippines during its revolution, and nothing terrible happened to me till I returned to peaceful, protected Santa Barbara, and a forest fire wiped out my house, with me stuck right beside it.

Reminds me of a story Tom Cover once told. He was pulled over by a cop for rolling through a stop sign. Tom exclaimed that "he was only a block from his house!". The officer lectured "that most accidents occur close to the home". To which Tom replied "that most driving occurs close to the home". The officer got the point but Tom got the ticket.