Over the last several years I’ve written a few stories for the New York Times. As a result, PR firms have started pitching me stories. Most of their “stories that would be perfect for the Times” are pretty lame. As a freelancer, sending those queries would put me on the Times’ shit list. But every now and then a cold pitch seems interesting and I follow up.
I’ve worked in advertising and marketing and am generally OK with playing a game whose rules I know well. I don’t follow up if they’re pitching something they see as a positive story but I see as a negative one. IE, I don’t say, “Yeah sure, let’s talk,” then set out to use their information to write a scathing critique of their company or idea. I write lots of scathing critiques, but I originate them myself.
Twice in the last few months I’ve followed up what I thought were interesting leads and then been put in a tricky situation when stories that I initially thought would be positive or interesting took a darker turn and demanded a critical approach.
I have doubts about the degree of protection provided by these turbans, but I think this subject is worthy of discussion.
Your phone is recording your driving (or riding) habits
The first time, it was a story about distracted driving, until I was distracted by the source of the data. The pitch came from a PR firm working for a “Big Data” subsidiary of a major auto insurer.
This company’s PR firm contacted me to ask if I wanted to interview the CEO about data gathered on distracted driving across the U.S. Interestingly, the prevalence of distracted driving varies quite a lot from state to state. In fact, on vehicle-miles-traveled basis, drivers in the most-distracted states are about twice as likely to text and drive as drivers in the least-distracted states. And, there’s no obvious explanation in terms of population density or demographics, road congestion, or state traffic codes.
This seemed like a classic “Mark Gardiner” story, so I got the PR people to set up a call with the Big Data CEO. He told me that they hadn’t directly measured distraction. Rather they used any “sudden acceleration event” within one minute of texting as a proxy measure for distraction. That was fine as far as it went; basically, they were looking for vehicles that had slammed on the brakes soon after texting.
I’d assumed that since it was an insuretech business, the data had come from customers who’d signed up for usage-based insurance and, thus, chosen to have their behavior tracked. But a few minutes into our conversation, the CEO got my full attention when he blithely explained that the information had not come from insurance-specific apps or devices installed in the insureds’ cars—rather it had come from a variety of other apps that drivers happened to have installed on their phones. Two that he mentioned were Life 360 and WeatherBug.
Life 360 is an app that’s sold to parents as a way of monitoring their kids’ driving. Parents obviously know the app is tracking their kids but I doubt parents realize the app also lets other people track their kids—including people whose only connection with Life 360 is that they happened to buy a tranche of data. That’s even more true for an app like WeatherBug. That app obviously knows where you are; how else could it give you a location-specific forecast? But it’s not obvious why it should monitor, record, and sell your driving behavior.
I tried to play it cool; it was all I could do not to yell, “WAIT! STOP!! Did you just voluntarily admit that you’re gathering data on driving habits from customers who—faced with some 30,000-word User “Agreement” clicked “Accept”—but had no idea they’d agreed to share their driving habits?
Something in my voice probably betrayed my dismay, because the CEO was prompted to volunteer that, of course, the data was all anonymized. Anonymized, maybe. But not anonymous.
A few years ago, the New York Times bought a tranche of cell phone location data and reporters were easily able to identify many phone users. You don’t exactly have to be Alan Turing to de-anonymize it; the place your phone goes every night is likely your home; on workdays, your phone is probably with you at your place of employment.
The tranche of phone data the Times bought—curiouser and curiouser—included one anonymized number that tracked with the known location of Donald Trump. They easily identified that phone’s owner as a member of the Secret Service detail charged with protecting the President. Then, reporters identified the school where, from time to time, the agent picked up his (or her) child. Can you fucking imagine?
I hung up the phone realizing that the only story I wanted to write was one that might get the PR firm fired. For the next few weeks they followed up wondering when or where the story might run. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I’d killed the story for their own good.
A turban for motorSikhlists
More recently, I got a pitch from a Toronto PR firm. I paid attention to that one because one protagonist in the story was an ad agency Creative Director (hey, I used to be one of those!) who’d teamed up with a product designer to create a safer turban for Sikh motorcyclists.
Sikhs are exempted from wearing crash helmets in several Canadian provinces. As far as I know, they are the only group with such an exemption. The rationale is that their religion insists on the wearing of a turban and a.) there’s no helmet made big enough to fit over an adult’s turban and b.) even if there was, a Sikh edict prohibits covering the turban.
Neither of the inventors was a motorcyclist, but they sought input from members of a Sikh motorcycle club and got input and assistance from a local Harley-Davidson dealer.
Again, I found myself conflicted. The inventors were nice; Sikhism is more palatable than most religions; the turban they invented, which is layered with “bullet-proof” fabric and 3DO-style soft armor, looks cool. The PR firm even released a bunch of videos in which articulate and sympathetic Sikhs described how thrilled they were after trying the prototypes.
The thing is, those few testers were only reporting how they felt about the new turban, compared to a traditional cloth one. The PR firm blithely promoted the story of a safety product invented by two guys who are neither motorcyclists nor helmet experts, who developed the product without any of the testing that precedes certification for new crash helmets.
I’d say, “No one has any idea whether it works or not,” but I do have an idea: It won’t work—at least not by any reasonable measure. Even if 6d used absolutely state-of-the-art technology to produce a helmet with the limited coverage and thickness of a turban, it would not meet modern standards.
I did end up writing about the turban for Sikh bikers in a story published in Common Tread, but Lance Oliver (CT’s editor) and I agonized over my treatment of the story.
In the end I justified the story to myself (and, hopefully, readers) by pointing out that the inventors weren’t claiming their turban was equivalent to a crash helmet, or that by inventing it they’d made motorcycling safe for observant Sikhs. They were just saying that it was safer than a regular turban. (Even that is conjecture at this point—as is the degree of protection afforded by an ordinary turban; that’s been the subject of several accident studies in India, but comparisons of head injuries in bare-headed vs. turbaned riders are inconclusive.)
Although it would have been easy to just climb up on my high ATGATT horse and rip the turban-for-motorcyclists idea to shreds, I accepted the challenge of covering a group of motorcyclists who for their own reasons want to ride but won’t wear helmets.
I’m ready to believe that the newfangled turban provides marginally better protection than a regular turban in at least some crashes—even though from my perspective if your religion prevents you from wearing a crash helmet, you’re bette off taking up a different hobby; maybe golf or tennis.
I concluded by arguing that in Canada, the baseline for what constitutes adequate protection has to be an approved crash helmet—that’s what the 98.5% of Canadians who aren’t Sikhs have to wear.
But I would endorse the use of the new turban in India. Motorcycles outnumber cars about 10:1 in Punjab, which is the only Indian state that is majority Sikh. Those riders aren’t riding for fun, like Canadians; In India, motorcycles are essential transportation. Sikhs there are under even more social pressure to eschew helmets, and as a consequence suffer head injuries at alarming rates. Even a slightly safer turban would save some lives there.