{
  "id": "2001-novemberdecember-a-pet-project",
  "slug": "2001-novemberdecember-a-pet-project",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2001-novemberdecember-a-pet-project.html",
  "year": 2001,
  "month": "November/December",
  "monthNum": 11,
  "headline": "A pet project",
  "kicker": "FIRESTONE",
  "author_name": "Sean Mussenden",
  "author_title": "Reporter",
  "affiliation": "Capital News Service",
  "summary": "Two young reporters discovered that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had miscalculated Firestone tire-related deaths by including two pet deaths in their official count, exposing a serious flaw in a dataset being used by major news organizations nationwide.",
  "keywords": [
    "verification",
    "dataset",
    "safety"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Data & Databases",
    "Public Safety"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Excel"
  ],
  "full_text": "Never completely trust government data. Sounds like a no-brainer for veteran CAR disciples. But it took a bit of simple spreadsheet work and a chance discovery to hammer that point home for two young reporters. My colleague Mark K. Matthews and I, both working for a student wire service run by the University of Maryland's College of Journalism, broke a national story last fall that embarrassed federal safety regulators investigating Firestone tire failures.\n\nWe disclosed that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had miscalculated the number of human deaths linked to the tires with dead pets. Granted it was only two animals - a German shepherd and a Persian cat out of 103 total deaths reported to the agency as of Sep. 15, 2000.\n\nMajor problem\n\nBut the error exposed a serious flaw in a dataset that every major newspaper, wire service and network news program in the country was using to supplement their blanket Firestone coverage.\n\nMy first venture to the NHTSA Web site began as a quest to localize the national Firestone story. Stories by the University of Maryland's wire service, Capital News Service, are largely run by newspapers in Maryland.\n\nIn September, my editor in the Maryland state capital bureau of Capital News Service, Adrianne Flynn, wanted to find the number of Maryland accidents linked to Firestone tires.\n\nFirst step\n\nLike many journalists across the country, I downloaded NHTSA data from the Web into an Excel spreadsheet. I filtered for accidents reported from Maryland and did some quick analysis, mostly looking at the type of accidents (lots of rollovers), vehicles (usually Fords), and injuries (no fatals). After double and triple checking my work, I wrote a short sidebar for our Maryland clients to run along side the national stories.\n\nTwo weeks later, when NHTSA updated their data and added more records, it seemed natural to again trot out the Maryland data for a story. Again, I downloaded the spreadsheet, and did some quick analysis.\n\nBut this time there was a fatal listed for Maryland, a surprise given that most of the fatal accidents linked to Firestone tread separation occurred in warmer Southern climes.\n\nWe needed to verify that it was correct with the hard copy of the accident record given to NHTSA. We also needed more information, specifically names and contact information, to begin fleshing out the story (We would learn later that NHTSA redacted all names.)\n\nD.C. help\n\nFrom the spreadsheet, I pulled the individual record number and called Matthews, stationed in the Capital News Service Washington, D.C. bureau. He went to the records office, and, after a predictable hassle, obtained a copy.\n\nLike the spreadsheet, the hard copy showed two fatals. But the short narrative said nothing of people dying, just two animals. We knew we had a story, if we could confirm in the few hours before deadline that NHTSA was including these two pet deaths in their oft-repeated number of deaths linked to the tires.\n\nAfter a bit of pressure - Matthews in person at NHTSA and I over the phone - we finally got a spokesman to confirm the error. He said the agency would remove the two pets from their totals and comb through their records in search of any more errors.\n\nSome of our regular clients picked up the story, and several national newspapers, nightly news programs, and wire services ran stories about our discovery.\n\nReuters, in their version, had the good sense to call People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for comment on the pets removal, something I did two days later in a follow-up I wrote about NHTSA naming the animals on their Web site. Predictably, PETA was outraged that the pets were removed from the list.\n\nLessons\n\nI suppose this story taught us two things:\n\n1. Always take great pains to verify the accuracy of a dataset before reporting anything. For us, that meant looking at the hard copy of the accident record. If we had not, and simply printed that two fatals had been reported from Maryland, our story would have been incorrect.\n\n2. It does not take a months-long database project to write a good story using CAR skills. Just using basic techniques in day-to-day reporting, like filtering in Excel for example, can lead to a decent story.\n\nSean Mussenden can be reached at smussenden@orlandosentinel.com.\n\nMark K. Matthews can be reached at mmthews@wam.umd.edu.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "2001-mayjune-firestone-and-explorers",
      "score": 0.175
    },
    {
      "slug": "1998-december-first-ventures",
      "score": 0.152
    },
    {
      "slug": "1999-december-fatal-accidents",
      "score": 0.14
    },
    {
      "slug": "2000-june-data-update",
      "score": 0.138
    },
    {
      "slug": "2000-march-recent-car-stories-2",
      "score": 0.129
    }
  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2001-novemberdecember-a-pet-project.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2001-novemberdecember-a-pet-project.json"
}