What Is The Point Of Statistics?
Thursday, 22. November 2018
I am often quoted in the press when it comes to things like new car registrations and why diesel sales are up or down compared to petrol sales. I haven’t of late because many of the journalists, not all I would hasten to add, simply put out a story that they want to rather than the truth. Oops sounding like Trump there for a moment!
It isn’t all the fault of the journalists, often it is the fault of the so-called experts they approach for a comment other than myself. The sort of people who have probably never spoken to a customer or a member of dealership staff. They simply guess, then before you know it the guess becomes the truth.
One of the biggest problems in all the commentary is the fact that behind the comments are usually statistics and they don’t come with sufficient explanation – leaving it to the ‘experts’ to interpret the figures. Take new car sales in August and September this year. Quite correctly, following the announcement that new car sales in August were up on previous Augusts, the headlines picked up that due to the new WLTP emissions test rules cars had to be sold by the end of August – or any unsold cars that didn’t meet the new levels could be forcibly scrapped.
Not surprising that any cars in stock were heavily discounted. Hence the spike in sales – all fine so far. In the meantime, cars were being tested, failing, modified then retested in order to meet the new standards. In the case of Jaguar Landrover, they shut down their order book and stopped making cars that hadn’t been emissions approved.
So when Joe Public walked into their local dealerships to buy a new car on the new registration for September there were no bloody cars. So they either bought second hand or they placed an order for a new car. So orders and new car sales in September may have been on target or even up on previous years (I’m not saying they were) the ‘experts’ immediately searched for reasons.
Things such as Brexit, EU manufacturers turning their backs on the UK, the economy not as strong as was thought, consumers and businesses not confident about the future. When all they measured was sales and not orders it’s not bloody surprising – there were no damned cars to register – good grief.
And don’t even get me started on the diesel vs petrol debate. Such appaling information on the issues related to either petrol or diesel emissions confuses everyone. And whilst the debate goes on London and other cities see a bit of a cash cow and treat all diesels as destroyers of the universe and tax them for entering the city and parking. Whilst environmentalists report an increase in CO2 emissions last year for the first time since records began. That’s the stuff that petrol engines generate more than diesels.
On the other hand a lifetime of breathing in NOx whilst walking down the street has been statistically proven to shorten lives – by an average of 3 minutes. Look, I’m not making light of car emissions and their effect on health but as with new car registrations and all other statistics – can we please add caveats to the stats. in order to bring some reality into the comments? Probably not – they won’t make such exciting headlines! By Graham Hill
