Not saying bikes aren't the most dangerous, but comparing against the distance skews this. A plane trip is usually quite a bit longer than any other.
Not sure how else to measure it though, maybe against number of trips traveled?
Number of trips sounds more reasonable. It will show the odds of completing a trip for different means of transport
Go go gadget spitball math!
Sources for average transit mode speed
Source 1:
These are the average speeds of some common modes of transportation:
Commercial passenger aircraft: 547 to 575 miles per hour Private jet: 400 to 711 miles per hour Europe high-speed rail: 155 to 217 miles per hour Shinkansen (Japanese bullet trains): 150 to 200 miles per hour Modern cruise ship: 23 to 27 miles per hour Bicycle: 10 to 24 miles per hour Sailboat: 4.5 to 7 miles per hour Walking: 3 miles per hour
Source 2:
Source 3:
https://wonderlearning.blog/real-average-speed-us-train-facts
When people think of passenger trains, they often envision swift, efficient travel. However, the operational reality for Amtrak, the primary passenger rail operator in the United States, is far more nuanced. While its locomotives are capable of impressive speeds, the average journey speed for most passengers is surprisingly modest, often hovering between 50 and 60 miles per hour, with long-distance routes averaging even less.
Ok, I'm USAsian, gonna be US-centric, and I'm gonna make some spitball roundings for easier math:
Average Actual Travel Speed:
Motorcycle: 50 mph
Car: 50 mph
Ferry: 25 mph
Train: 50 mph (long/medium distance)
Bus: 25 mph
Subway/Lightrail: 25 mph
Aircraft: 550 mph
Attempt at Conveying Math Proof
So we have:
D = deaths per billion miles. S = speed in miles per hour.
If we first solve for and find the time taken to travel one billion miles at speed S, we would do:
T = 1,000,000,000โ / S
(T is time in hours)
What we want is D / T
D / T = D / ( 1,000,000,000 / S)
->
D / T = (D * S) / 1,000,000,000
So, that's our rough conversion.
Using (D * S) / 1,000,000,000 , the OP graph becomes:
Deaths per hour of transit, by transit mode, for every billion miles travelled:
Motorcycles: 10,628.5
Car: 364
Ferry: 79.25
Train: 21.5
Subway/Lightrail: 6
Bus: 2.75
Aircraft: 38.5
So... thats basically deaths per billion hours spent using said transit mode.
Notes
You may have noticed that Aircraft are now more dangerous than Buses, Subways, med/long distance Trains, and are only ~2x safer than Ferries, not ~45x times safer, as they are with the OP metric.
One hour of Motorcycles transit, on the other hand, is now ~29x more deadly than an hour of car transit, ~276x more deadly than an hour of aircraft transit...
... as opposed to the OP metric, where a billion miles of motorcycle travel is again ~29x more deadly than a billion miles of car travel, but is ~3039x more deadly than a billion miles of aircraft travel.
tl;dr:
Basically, take travel speed into account, and aircraft become significantly more deadly per hour spent travelling in them, but the ratios between terrestrial and aquatic craft stay pretty similar, due to no one having yet proposed the ikranoplan as a mass transit solution.
(Historically minded readers may note the absence from these numbers of the 'revolutionary' hyperloop, as well as monorail, due to basically not fucking existing in real life.)
You may quibble about the actual average speeds of various transit modes as you please.
More Notes
Probably also worth noting that this is only deaths, not injuries, say, requiring hospitalization.
I imagine doing deaths + serious injuries would also change this graph significantly.
Also also, this doesn't take into account road rage that does not directly involve the vehicle, I don't think.
It does not include injuries or deaths on some form of public or mass transit where say, you get assaulted by another passenger, or something like that.
That could also tweak things, potentially, but I have no strong instinct about if it would really matter, or how... and, you could again do deaths vs deaths + serious injuries.
what's going on with ferries...
also how much does it change if you take out the Staten Island Ferry?
Quite a few crappy ferries sink weekly in South East Asia, usually overloaded way beyond safety margins.
You'd figure the extra passengers would make the ratio go down you know?
What about death of people other than passengers?
I feel like measuring this data based on miles is bad. This data would be much more relevant if it was measured in passenger travel hours instead.
A plane can travel like 500 miles in an hour. I feel that this skews the data significantly since its being compared to vehicles that should not typically be covering over 100 miles per hour.
I was thinking the same thing, but if the goal is to get from point a to point b then the real question is what gets you there the safest.
For example, if you wanted to know what the safest way to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco was or what the relative danger of each travel method was, this would be the right way to frame the data. The fact that it takes longer to travel with a car than a plane doesn't factor into the safety of the travel. You still go the same distance.
How the fuck are ferry and train so high? Must be including suicides for trains, not really use how the ferry gets so much though. Heart attacks on long distance ferry trips? But then would expect similar from planes.
Unexpected - I thought flying would be by magnitudes safer than anything, but it's in the same magnitude as bus, and not even train is x10. I always thought that all those safety regulations were unnecessary, just compensating for some psychological factor of how it FEELS dangerous due to overreporting, history and other factors. But apparently, they are needed so it just remains barely safer than other forms of public transportation.
Worth noting that this data shows flying to be two orders of magnitude safer than travel by car. I think what this showed me is that train, subway, and bus are all somewhat safer than I expected, rather than that air travel is less safe than I expected.
Well, nice knowing you all ๐
It would be interesting to see different motorcycle stats. Those 100+ horsepower beasts are probably in another ballpark than regular commuter bikes (e.g. 125cc).
Motorcycle accidents have become very frequent in some twenty years in my region, with Thailand being on top.
Where I live, people are buying up motorcycles because they're cheap and gives them more mobility than a car and most forms of public transportation they deem as frustratingly slow. But with them having little or no formal driving education, coupled with DUI, do have a lot of accidents happening.
What country? Why is bicycle missing?
What percentage of plane deaths are snake related?
So according to this chart, any time I get in a car, I have a 1 in 137,362,637.36264 chance of dying?
That's a lot better than than I thought. I'll take those odds.
Every mile you drive you have a 1 in 137,362,637.36264 chance of dying. So if you drive to the sun and .474 of the way back you are guaranteed ti die (if you are bad at probability)
I guarantee you will die if you get in whatever car you have and make it even 1% of the way to the sun, regardless of how good you are at probability.
What about pedestrians, wankblog?
But how do they die? How many are killed by other drivers?
I've wanted a motorcycle for decades. NHTSA's stats on motorcycle accidents send very mixed signals:
So basically, have a license and training and don't drink. Helmets are good for your health.
...
Twenty-four percent of motorcycles in fatal traffic crashes in 2023 collided with fixed objects, compared to 16 percent for passenger cars, 12 percent for light trucks, and 4 percent for large trucks.
Don't ride with a loonitick.
In 2023 there were 3,419 fatal two-vehicle crashes each involving a motorcycle and another type of vehicle. In 46 percent (1,588) of these crashes, the other vehicles were turning left while the motorcycles were going straight, passing, or overtaking other vehicles.
Well, that sucks :(
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