> 1. Let's assume carriages would have undergone the same evolution of safety. That means modern carriages would have a lower death rate than old ones. It also makes the possible cherry-picking matter a lot less because the increasing menace of transportation over the last 20 years would be the same either way.
That's like saying it's fine to compare the cost of houses in New York and San Francisco by comparing the cost of a house in New York in 1998 to the cost of a house in San Francisco in 2009, because house prices change at more or less the same rate everywhere in the country. It's true that house prices tend to go up or down at a similar rate everywhere, but it's still a problem if you cherry-pick the two years you're making a comparison with!
You can criticize their choice of sources, you can dig deeper and provide more comprehensive data, but going post after post admonishing them for cherry-picking data that is just gauche. They didn't pick the years!
They picked the sources, and their sources use apparently arbitrary dates that are particularly unrepresentative. Maybe that's just an unfortunate coincidence, but even if so, the net effect is the same as cherry-picking.
Well, no it's not. Because if they were cherry-picking, then your needling them repeatedly over the data could actually produce a reaction that gets you more accurate data.
But since they are just presenting you with the most commonly available data, nothing you say will make them produce different results.
That's like saying it's fine to compare the cost of houses in New York and San Francisco by comparing the cost of a house in New York in 1998 to the cost of a house in San Francisco in 2009, because house prices change at more or less the same rate everywhere in the country. It's true that house prices tend to go up or down at a similar rate everywhere, but it's still a problem if you cherry-pick the two years you're making a comparison with!