Transportation: Safety in Numbers

December 23rd, 2012
safety, transit
Safety is a social dynamic. When something sufficiently bad happens people get upset and try to prevent it happening again. Every mode of transportation can be run in many ways, primarily trading off safety, speed, and cost. Airplanes are not inherently safer than cars, but the level of risk we're willing to accept with them is much lower. Why? Because when a plane crashes a lot more people die, enough to make news, enough to make regulations. Vehicles that hold more people are held to disproportionately higher standards in their design, construction, and operation, because of the immense negative feedback their creators and operators get when things go wrong. Which means there's a good rule of thumb for estimating the safety of different transportation options: the more people that would die along with you in an accident, the less likely an accident is.
Referenced in: Is driving really safer than flying?

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Male Sexuality

Testosterone-driven sexuality is different from estrogen-driven sexuality.

via Thing of Things August 8, 2025

The anti-fragile culture

I wrote a post about organizational culture!.

via Home August 6, 2025

Retrospective on life tracking and effectiveness systems

I’ve been doing life tracking for around 10 years, and this post is looking back at some things I learned from the data (since my previous retrospective in 2017). Highlights include what I get out of the Oura ring, correlations between sleep and deep work…

via Victoria Krakovna July 4, 2025

more     (via openring)