Death and Driving

I ran across an interesting article (registration required) in the NY Times yesterday about vehicle deaths in the US yesterday. As you may not know roughly 42,000 people die per year in car wrecks which is about 2/3 of US solders that died in Vietnam (58,000) during that decade long war.

I always thought this was a frightening statistic. I mean it seems people worry more about drug overdoses, West Nile Fever, etc. considering how many more people are killed per year in cars. (About as many people as five years of war in Southeast Asia*). It turns out though, that the chance of being killed as a driver, passenger, motorcycle rider, cyclist or pedestrian is only 1.44 per 100 MILLION miles driven. So to give you some sort of perspective you would have to drive 12,500 miles a year (about average for a car) for over 5500 years to be killed on or by a motorized vehicle, on average. Now I’m sure you are thinking, “Well, Ian you ride a motorcycle and motorcycles are more dangerous”. How do I know what you are thinking my friends? Some things you will never know, but know this! I am 30 times more likely to be killed per mile I ride on a motorcycle than you do driving a car. But even so that is one death per 185 years. So I’m all set. Now yer educated, have a nice day.

*Note that is just American casualties. The Vietnamese lost hundreds of thousands more.