[Naillik]

If the ball point pen was responsible for ~40,000 deaths per year (in the USA), and reducing its size by half did not meaningfully diminish its function as a pen for most users… I’d rather not kill an extra 20,000 people a year just to have a bigger pen.

[bombcar]

But how many of the 40k deaths are directly attributable to the characteristics being discussed? We can’t go from “twice as likely to kill a kid” to “half of the 40k deaths are kids killed by this thing” without examining the evidence.

(Apparently 30% of th fatalities involve alcohol but we already tried banning that once …)

[simianwords]

I agree if this is true

> and reducing its size by half did not meaningfully diminish its function as a pen for most users