Normally, I don't watch 20/20, but I was watching my TiVo of Alias and they had a commercial of this week's 20/20 on ten popular myths. Most of them were phrased in true/false style, and definitely not as cool or fun as Mythbusters.
Most of them are pretty common sense. The number one myth was: Are you safer driving an SUV than a car? Of the people surveyed on the 20/20 website, 67% said yes, 33% said no. They set up a Chevy Trailblazer (SUV) vs. a Chevy Malibu (Sedan) on a test track (the Consumer Reports test track).
The three main reasons why it's not safer than a car:
1. False sense of security
2. Manueverability
They tested it on the race track to test avoidance, steering and body roll. They just kept doing the tests at higher speeds until it failed the test. The sedan failed at 53 mph, while the SUV failed at 40.
3. Rollovers
There are few rollovers, but more deaths per rollovers, and the 3 times as likely in an SUV to die than someone in a car.
I really dislike SUVs. Interestingly enough, I'm finding that some of my friends tend to be more pro-SUV they older they get. If I had a family, I would get a minivan, not an SUV.
Just yesterday a friend of mine cited that he wanted to buy an SUV for his family. His reasons:
- it felt safer, because you can see further, and you sit higher.
- it can carry more people
- it has more powerful engine
Try as we might, we couldn't convince him to get a minivan or a station wagon.
I have another friend who wants to trade in his Acura TL for a SUV. He believes that as long as you buy one of the newer ones, they are safe. I couldn't get him to budge on it either, and this saddens me.
I'll go over the other nine in the extended entry.
The ten popular myths were:
All of the following are untrue
10: More strange things happen during the full moon
We just remember the strange happenings more during a full moon. There's no correlation.
9:Eating low carb foods means you lose weight
Nope. You still need to watch what you eat, and to make sure the nutritional info is accurate.
8: Girls feel more pressure than boys about sex
Nope. Guys actually have more pressure to deal with from other boys. I think they only focused on the girl-to-girl pressures and the boy-to-boy pressures, not girl to boy.
7:Psychics uses psychic powers to solve crimes
There is no psychic work which has helped police in any missing persons search.
6: Shaving causes hair to grow back faster, thicker
No, it's genetic.
5: Boys carry high, girls carry low
Nope. Old wive's tale
4: Swimming after eating is dangerous
Nope. They took a swim class, fed them cheeseburgers and fries and non suffered any ill effects.
3: Are we in danger of losing our forests?
No. there's actually 2 acres of forest per person, and the amount of forest land we have is actually more than we've had in the past.
2: The More expensive the skin cream, the better it works.
They ran a $450 over the counter beauty creme against a prescription cream. The prescribed cream with retinol worked better than the $450 cream and cost much less.
I don't think some of the testing and methodology wa sthe greatest -- for instance, one should never tell the test subjects what they are testing for,
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