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by erostrate 900 days ago
The following are all ~ 1 in a million chance of death, or 1 micromort:

Travelling 6 miles (9.7 km) by motorcycle

Travelling 17 miles (27 km) by walking

Travelling 20 miles (32 km) by bicycle

Travelling 230 miles (370 km) by car

Travelling 1,000 miles (1,600 km) by jet

Travelling 6,000 miles (9,656 km) by train

But switching from car to bicycle for short trips still increases life expectancy due to health effects.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920084/
2 comments
drzaiusapelord 900 days ago
Chicago to LA is about 2,000 miles.

So in the article about 200 miles driving (in California) is 1 in a million chance of dying. So lets use that number nationwide to be lazy.

Now we can move a decimal point over. So the death chances of a Chicago to LA drive is 100,000 in one. But you drive back, so then its that twice. Once in 50,000 people dying on a Chicago to LA and back roadtrip is extremely frightening. How many people from the midwest make this drive a year? Or from the east coast? How many don't make it back?

The USA, on average, has 100+ fatalities via auto transportation a day.

The above ignores serious injury, permanent disability, etc. Its just death. The chances of having to deal with a broken spine, losing a limb, blindness, 3rd degree burns all over your body, etc aren't even calculated, but those are real and far more common than death. Death being harder to achieve with modern medical treatments.

Cars are extremely dangerous. We downplay what it means to drive.

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tyingq 900 days ago
> We downplay what it means to drive

I wondered about that reading some of the comments about the 737 Max. We routinely travel in exponentially more risky ways all the time, yet we expend time thinking about the safety benefit of avoiding a specific type of aircraft.

Not downplaying airline safety as a whole there, but thinking about it for yourself on a personal level is maybe not moving the needle.

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physicles 900 days ago
Agreed. It must’ve been terrible for the people on that plane, but I don’t think it’s worth my time to worry about what plane I’m flying on, or what the maintenance record of the airline is. For developed countries, they’re super good enough.
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teaearlgraycold 900 days ago
As a cyclist that’s trying to not die, I also have to assume this heavily depends on where you’re cycling. Along a stroad? You’re dead. Country road with more bikes than cars? Much safer.
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hughesjj 900 days ago
Also you can rack up miles on the interstate like no one's business on a road trip etc. imo it should be by unit time not unit distance but I could see the argument for distance

Same with planes. Like yeah if you wanted to make the same trip without a plane it's way more dangerous but what if you just wouldn't take the train from coast to coast in the first place?

IDK, imo time is the most important tradeoff for transport when doing per capital/etc measurements

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