US cheese imports

It appears that Americans have discovered a direct metabolic pathway between imported cheddar and pedestrian misadventure, a finding that suggests either cheese imports are somehow navigating our streets at night, or we have stumbled upon a correlation so perfectly useless it deserves its own academic journal. The universe, in its infinite indifference, has arranged for these two entirely unrelated statistics to move together like an old married couple who no longer speak but somehow always end up at the same grocery store at the same time. We have found the statistical equivalent of a very friendly coincidence pretending to be destiny.

What is almost certainly happening is that both cheese imports and pedestrian fatalities have been gently climbing alongside American population growth and increased urbanisation over the past eighteen years—more people means more cheese consumption and also, unfortunately, more people wandering near traffic. Urban centres grew wealthier and more cosmopolitan during this period, importing fancier cheeses while simultaneously building denser neighborhoods where pedestrians and vehicles negotiate the same space with the enthusiasm of two strangers forced to share a studio apartment. To put the scale in perspective: annual US cheese imports nearly doubled from about 470,000 tonnes in 2005 to roughly 900,000 tonnes by 2022, while pedestrian fatalities climbed from around 4,900 to 6,700 deaths in the same period—both steady, both climbing, both almost certainly following the same economic expansion curve rather than any actual causal relationship.

What this teaches us about pattern recognition is that our brains are magnificent at drawing straight lines between unrelated dots, and somewhat less magnificent at remembering that the universe contains approximately seven billion dots per person. The cheese and the fatalities move together not because one causes the other, but because they are both passengers on the same economic flight, each following their own purpose, completely indifferent to their fellow traveler. We saw a correlation and mistook it for a story. Cheese imports: merely expensive, innocent cargo.