But we don't do a good job of explaining this to reporters who then have to explain it to the public. The public pays the price with inaccurate, unbalanced, and often unfair, coverage. As many of you know, the price goes up after an accident as commentators rush to judgment. The results are predictable. And they can be significant.
Every accident brings a rash of speculation, wrong facts, and false accusations.
They say things that are so preliminary that they can't possibly be true. Phillips says one simple thing to do is to offer the media a list of experts to contact right after a crash so the information they get is reliable. We are not merely victims of bad press. There must be something to worry about. We can't change control, nor can we really change the catastrophic nature of accidents.