A plane isn't as versatile though. You can't go everywhere on a plane, train, or (to a lesser extent) bus, but you can in a car, motorcycle, or if you're committed, bicycle.
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
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
::: spoiler 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 = 1,000,000,000 / 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.
::: spoiler 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.
::: spoiler 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.
Maybe depends on where you are living, but you quite probably have the wrong impression.
In my country (Germany), less than 3000 people die each year in traffic overall, while already an estimated 4000 pedestrians die while simply using stairs.
So, "Stairway to Heaven" gains a whole different layer of meaning, as it seems... :-)
I would expect that pedestrian walk far less distance than cars drive, so even a twofold difference in absolute numbers will disappear when normalised by distance. For instance there is a general advice of walking 10k paces every day which is about 7km, average car speed in the city should be around 30km/h, so even if we assume 30 minutes of commute every day (and this is too generous, I believe) it will be more than two times the distance people (should) walk
Parachuting/skydiving is incredibly low risk compared to the average person's perception. The us had 9 deaths last year in 3.8 million skydives.
Wing suit usage has a similar number, IF you don't include base jumpers, which you shouldn't, because it's fundamentally a very, very different sport that happens to use (almost) the same equipment. You wouldn't include each bump in a nascar race as an accident and lump it into driving statistics, I would hope, nor do the same for people hiking in the woods and people fist fighting bears in the woods.
Considering I travel a mile or two, give or take, on each canopy flight when I jump, that's 9 deaths in ~8 million miles. Wing suits have a much better glide ratio when flying, so that would change things up as well. I'm curious how that would hold up to walking. Using the other feller's number of 4000 pedestrian deaths (on stairs) in germany, and estimating they walk 3 miles a day in a country of ~83 million, that's 249 million miles, giving us 1.6x10^-5, while skydiving is 2.4x10^-6.
But really... who would consider those activities as a mode of transport anyway?
Found some data on this. Certainly not a common way of measuring this. Looks like at least one of these is fatality by mode and doesn't take into account total percent of trips.
Doesn't appear to change anything. Flying remains the safest. Motorcycles remain the most dangerous.
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.
TBF, surprise traffic congestion (ie. some more surprising than others) and similar situations wherein humans are likely to get agitated and thus make shitty, abrupt choices... Are right up there with intersections. 🤌🏼
Given the difference between the first and other places, I don't believe that switching to time instead of length would actually change the significance of the top placement.
Any other reorder on the list is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
RIP my co worker and friend. It was 2001. You were the OG Bay Area techie. Empty pepsi cans and pizza delivery stacked sloppily on your desk. Smart AF and hard working, always laughing. Earning money loving living .
Riding your slim machine between lanes of SF traffic. Someone opened his car door for Lord knows what reason.
There's a reason lane-splitting is illegal in many jurisdictions. It's still a tragic loss, but your friend made the active decision to operate a vehicle that was already more dangerous in an even more dangerous way.
Also, I gotta say: there are few usernames that, if one stumbled into a room where it was being chanted by a circle of schoolchildren, would be a good sign of cult activity in the area. Yours is one of them —to the tune of Duck, Duck, Goose, of course.
There's a reason that drugs are illegal in many jurisdictions. It's still a tragic loss, but those junkies made the active decision to operate a needle that is already dangerous in an even more dangerous way.
Dude, take a step back and look at data, not the crappy chain of thought you call logic. Accidents involving injuries go down when lane splitting is made legal.
Exactly right. Lane splitting, when legalized and regulated, is safer, more efficient, and frowned at by the general populace because they refuse to listen to the experts on it. Sounds a lot like our regulations on 'illegal substances,' doesn't it?
follow the same rules as everyone else on the road
Yaaaaaawn. I suppose bicycles should have seat belts then, aye? California, montana, utah, and other places have made lane splitting legal. They are following the same rules.
I suppose bicycles should have seat belts then, aye?
Bicyclists are almost as bad as not following traffic laws; I watched a motorized one run a red light yesterday. When I hit that asshole, it’s my fault even though they ran the red.
California, montana, utah, and other places have made lane splitting legal.
My guess is part of what’s throwing that statistic off is the relatively short journeys of most ferries.
Maybe per hours of travel would be better? It would also make airplanes less of an outlier.
Airplanes should then be split to “general aviation” and “commercial aviation” to assuage people’s fears. General aviation is a lot riskier than flying commercial.
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).
How essential wearing a helmet is to these bikes is one of the only thing that keeps me from using it. I'll wear a lightweight road bicycle helmet reluctantly but the kind of helmet you need to ride a motorcycle is so uncomfortable to me, and represents the danger, that I'd rather just drive.
America, because nobody else has nearly the fatality rate per mile. SEA has more fatalities per capita, but that's because they have 100x more bikes per capita.
The average american motorcyclist only rides as a hobby, they drive a car the rest of the time, and they're either driving a racing bike or a 900 lb Harley. This isn't a recipe for competent riding.
I'll be honest, this will be skewed heavily by most motorcycles are not designed for two or more people
And most motorcyclists know that, and NEVER have any passengers, which self-selects for the risk takers heavily.
Also heavily skewed by the fact that most motorcycle deaths are not caused by the driver, but by other road users not looking, and doing stupid shit like taking a turn blind at 50mph then running the motorcyclist over.
I've been riding motorcycles Since I was 12. I'm in my 50's. I've never had a road accident, despite having ridden crotch rockets for a few years. I've had a few dirt ones, but without major breakage.
I have very rarely carried someone, especially because many passengers will intuitively counteract your leanings.
I'm now considering quitting, because I'm aware that I don't have the reflexes or 360° degree awareness I used to have.
A lot of people shouldn't be riding, they have a car mentality.
Thirty-four percent of motorcycle riders in fatal crashes in 2023 had no
valid motorcycle licenses.
-In 2023 motorcycle riders in fatal crashes had higher percentages of
alcohol impairment than drivers of any other motor vehicle type (26%
for motorcycles, 24% for passenger cars, 20% for light trucks, and 4%
for large trucks).
Forty-one percent of motorcycle riders who died in single-vehicle
crashes in 2023 were alcohol-impaired
Motorcycle riders killed in traffic crashes at night were two and a half
times more frequently alcohol-impaired than those killed during the day
(38% and 15%) in 2023.
In States without universal helmet laws, based on known helmet use, 51
percent of motorcyclists killed in 2023 were not wearing helmets, as
compared to 10 percent in States with universal helmet law
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.
Yeah, speaking as a rider from the USA it's a mixed bag. If you ride safe (licensed and know what you are doing, not drunk, wear a helmet, and assume you are invisible) it's orders of magnitude more safe than the statistics say. Sadly, there are a lot of reckless riders dying on bikes.
Still, a ton of drivers will absolutely drive like you are invisible and just plow into you. You also have to ride carefully and be constantly aware of your bike and your surroundings. Plan for bad situations as you see them forming even though most of the time nothing happens. Small mistakes can be negated by four wheels but won't be forgiven on two.
I didn't start until the pandemic, which gave me an opportunity to work remotely for a time and save money. I have enjoyed riding. The motivation to be present in the moment for the sake of safety is a bit zen for me. In a car I feel like I can arrive at work deep in thought about the horrors of the world and not even remember how I got there. Admittedly, as I got more comfortable on the bike, my mind can still wander but it's easier to snap back and focus on not dying on the bike.
This is especially true of motorcycles, where in Western countries they often go hand in hand with the time honored pastime of, "Let's all ride our Harleys to the bar and get absolutely sideways, and then ride our Harleys to another bar." I do know for sure that a large portion of motorcycle wrecks in general are single vehicle incidents, i.e. the rider ran out of skill and simply ate shit into a ditch, tree, guardrail, or the nearest Jersey wall.
I'd also be interested to see the source to determine what the geographical range of this is, i.e. whether or not it includes Southeast Asia where basically the entire population conducts all of its affairs from the back of a small motorbike.
At the end of the day, if you slam into something on your bike you're pretty much guaranteed to be worse off than slamming into the same thing in a car or a bus. But you're still not getting me off of mine.
It doesn't change the stats in the slightest, you're more likely to die on a bike, it doesn't really make any difference who's at fault if you're dead. 90% of the accidents being caused by unobservant car drivers won't save you.
It does because if you know you aren't going to drive your bike when drunk (and other reckless driving factors) you will be safer than the numbers indicate.
90% of the accidents being caused by unobservant car drivers won’t save you.
You have a source for this or did you make up this 90% number on the spot? Would be nice to have actual numbers on this since elsewhere in the thread someone else is saying over half of motorcycle fatalities are single vehicle accidents, which means it's biker could potentially have done something to avoid it.
You are more likely to die riding a bike than other forms of transportation but riding responsibly and defensively will absolutely change the severity of the stats.
A driver could still plow through you and you are still more likely to die - I'll absolutely concede that. You are just way, way more likely to die if you don't know how to ride (unlicensed), are impaired by alcohol or something, wear no helmet or other gear, and/or ride recklessly or carelessly.
The stats are the stats, driving a car everywhere at 15mph and covering it in airbags would probably change the car stats as well. If everyone drove perfectly and maintained their vehicles properly then we'd get a nice flat line.
You're way more likely to die if you don't know how to drive a car or do so drunk as well. The graph is showing the relative unsafeness of various vehicles as a whole, the fact being drunk or dumb on a bike has an outsize impact on killing bikers emphasises the fact it's less safe.
I've absolutely nothing against bikes or bikers and I'd suspect that overall biker's deaths are likely to be more self contained and have lesser impact on other road users.
The graph is showing the relative unsafeness of various vehicles as a whole
Yes. As a whole. As an average of the entire population.
the fact being drunk or dumb on a bike has an outsize impact on killing bikers emphasises the fact it's less safe.
Which I acknowledge and don't dispute. Bikes are inherently less safe than cars.
Cars have a lot of mandatory safety features like airbags, crumple zones, and seatbelts. They have four wheel stability and four points of contact on the road. They are relatively forgiving when it comes to mistakes and crashes.
Bikes don't even have universal helmet laws in every state... and if they do mandate helmets, often a brain bucket is legally sufficient. However, with only two points of contact, and a potentially high rate of acceleration, it is much easier to lose control and crash, especially if you are riding recklessly or without experience.
My point is that inexperience and recklessness can lead to a fatal crash much more easily on a motorcycle and likely contribute to the statistics for motorcycle fatalities more than it does for car fatalities.
Basically, squids kind of juice the numbers and make them more scary. It's not just squids - riding is not as safe as driving. Still, if you plan to ride responsibly your odds will be better than the stats suggest. Yes, the same logic applies to anything, but I believe it applies to bikes more than it applies to cars.
Doing hard things is harder to do. This doesn't mean you can't successfully do hard things it just means you have to try harder to do them. Taking a shortcut often ends in failure. In this case, failure can mean injured or dead.
And no, I'm not trying to say I'm cool and skilled because I ride a bike. I'm not yet that experienced or skilled on a bike... but I ride responsibly. I take it slow. I wear protective gear. I'm aware of my limits and I push them carefully.
Interestly, its not really inattentive car drivers that make motorcycling so dangerous.
Because of their small size, single headlight and rapidly changing speed, the human brain can't accurate identify, and track them. Especially at night or in adverse weather conditions. So drivers cut them off all the time because the brain does not process the information correctly.
Combine that with the average aggressive driving, speeding, tailgating, and other dumbass dangerous behaviors that I see motorcyclist do daily and the death rate is shockingly low in my opinion.
I spend a lot of time driving and have seen around 20 motorcycle accidents happen over the years. Only one was another drivers fault and not caused by the absolute stupidity of the motorcyclist.
In the Netherlands, bicyclists were always second place in deaths just behind people in cars. Most accidents which causes death are between a car and a bicycle. When the e-bike got trendy. We've seen a big spike in bicycle deaths in 2023 causing it to be the nr 1 cause of death in traffic. The Fat-bike is a big problem here. Its trendy among kids and realy easy to disable speed limiters. Percentage wise I couldn't find anything this fast but it does look like people in cars just don't see them or pay attention to them as the drive faster. I think cameras checking the surroundings is the best hope in getting those numbers down.
the majority caused by inattentive drivers of cars and trucks.
Are there statistics to back this up? Anecdotally, I see 10 motorcycles racing, illegally riding side-by-side in one lane, not signaling, speeding, and swerving around vehicles across multiple lanes for every 1 that I see driving safely.
Comparing US statistics to Dutch ones makes no sense. Their roads are several times more deadly than European ones regardless of vehicle.
Furthermore not all of their states have mandatory helmets (!) whereas over here it's rare to see someone missing something other than pants. Except scooters, scooter riders are under the impression that they don't ride a motorcycle and that flip-flops are appropriate apparel.
Then there's a lot you can do as a motorcyclist to mitigate risk. Riding safely is one (not everyone seems capable of that, there's quite a spread in riding behaviors, but also an obvious bias in which ones you'll remember seeing on your commute). A strict no-alcohol policy is another, and not riding at night on weekends. You can also wear extra safety gear such as a high-vis airbag.
Also licensing requirements. Oh and American motorcycles don't have to be equipped with ABS. They be crazy over there.
I wonder how these stats would change if there weren’t cars on the road. I mean its pretty obvious if a car and a motorcycle crash the motorcycle’s gonna have it worst.
The numbers would go down by half, which is meaningful, but also way less than you'd want it to. I can't be arsed to pull up the NHTSA data url right now, but I use the factoid all the time when I talk to people about my riding: give or take 54% of motorcycle deaths are single vehicle accidents. Of those, the vast majority involve alcohol or speeding. So if I avoid alcohol I cut my chances by a large factor.
Speeding is slightly fuzzier, because the statistics are built from crash reports by police, and you can never know if they take the word of a witness that a motorcycle passed at a 4mph difference in speed, which, c'mon, is not the same as someone whizzing down a canyon road at 20mph or more over the limit.
My favorite "factoid" is that the -oid part originally means "resembling," like a humanoid is something that only looks human, so technically a factoid would be something that only resembles fact. However, I'm not a dirty prescriptivist and I understood perfectly what you meant, so please carry on.
Presciptivism is where it's at, broseidon! I use factoid for when something seems like a fact, but you can't verify it right then. I know the internet often uses it for something quoted so much that people take it as fact even though it's false.
Wikipedia just hates us all. I don't want it to be a brief truth, waaah!
I hate the concept of "brief truth". The Germans probably have a word for it. things can stop being true. Everything is a brief truth on a long enough timeline. By this definition "the moon exists" is a factoid because very briefly from now (on a cosmological timeline) that's practically already false. Bah!
Didn't you know? This is what me and my buddies get up to on Saturday nights.
Motorcycle cops think they're hot shit because they can weave between a bunch of cones. Amateurs. Lets see you try to work the throttle, brake, and clutch on a dirtbike while also wielding a 10' long piece of PVC pipe with a boxing glove on the end of it.
I was in a bike accident once. I walked away with cartilage inflammation but the driver ended up breaking a different bone in 3 out of 4 limbs, he spent a month in the hospital. I told myself I was too old for that shit and definitely too young to die from it.
Scariest moment of my life and I'm never ever getting on a motorcycle again. Fact is I got very very lucky. Wasn't even our fault, an other motorcycle came into our lane and hit us. They were drunk but if it would have been a car or if we were going faster, we would be dead.
Ya exactly. I ended up flying off and bouncing a few times in the dirt on the side of the road, but he actually fell with the bike. My friend was the one driving (this was almost a decade ago).
Interesting how my german statistic shows way lower numbers than the original statistic.
Maybe the original was for some specific country with worse road conditions than Germany. Or it was from a different time, or wasn't real at all, dunno
That and busses also carry fewer people. Train accidents are rare but when they happen they're horrific because of speed and the sheer number of people involved.
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.
My guess for ferries would be that most ferry trips are very short. That means less total travel per trip, so for the same risk per trip it gets much higher risk per distance.
As someone who lives on an island, and regularly takes a sea ferry though unprotected waters, (ie not through a bay or harbor, waves have 100s of miles to build) that stat makes sense to me.
Id guess a lot of that could be attributed to people falling and injuring themselves.
As my dad would have said, "Landlubbers don't respect the Sea."
That floor may be shifting 6+' in one direction or another, and people without their sea legs will be getting up for the head, snack bar, or just to walk off the seasickness, then falling as the boat shifts.
And theres a lot of metal, and protruding metal (bulkheads, cleats, even just the metal floors and walls, etc). Even when the sea is calm as glass, the boat can still shudder or bounce randomly as it hits a random bit of turbulence. And its common for small kids to be running around or, say, an elderly person walking with a cane, not holding onto a railing to take a spill.
Finally, theres generally going to be a wait for advanced medical treatment, until you make it to port. Ive seen one person med evac-ed out, by helicopter, so its possible, but that was a crewman who's arm was amputed by machinery. For the average concussion/ broken bone, theres only so much the ships medic can do, and you're waiting til the ferry is docked for an ambulance.
The other risk is lost at sea incidents.
Ferries tend to have pretty good fencing/ railings to prevent people falling overboard, but people do dumb shit. Like climbing or straddling those railings. And if its even 15 minutes before someone reports you, at 12mph, thats already 3 miles the boat's traveled, making a large (and constantly growing) search area to find you in, and you're a tiny speck spot in a vast sea. I know our ferries have only had one in my lifetime (and it was deemed a potential suicide- solo traveler who turned out to have no arrival plans like lodging arranged, went missing off anight ferry)
I'd consider those driving motorcycles to be more prone to take risky maneuvers.
Wonder how the graph would change if they drove like regular commuters to the destinations (e.g. not weaving at traffic lights, not speeding for the thrill, no wheelies and other stunts).
I'd be interested to know if motor scooters/Vespas were lumped in with motorcycles. I'd wager a 99cc scooter has a lower mortality rate than a crotch rocket or a Harley.
Weaving in at traffic ligths, aka lane splitting is significantly safer for the motorcyclist, since at a red traffic light the most probable accident is getting rear-ended, which is way deadlier for a motorcyclist.
Per hour traveled makes the most sense imo, otherwise you bias towards modes of transport used for short trips instead since they spend less time in danger.
true this graph can suck my ballocks.
"pAsSeNgEr MiLeS" airplanes do 360x6000 passenger miles in one trip and avarge people hardly travel once a year. car owners do maybe 800 trips per year 50 passenger miles each.
What's the objection? If you're gonna be travelling from A to B, you, a passenger, will cover C miles, and the odds of biting it scale accordingly. "Per trip" would mean you can halve a car's odds by stopping at a gas station and calling that a "trip".
Per trip makes motorcycle more comparable with plane. Per mile makes motorcycle more comparable with car. They're just inherently different, so comparing them is awkward.
You can multiply this by the average trip distance to get per trip.
This statistics is a bit sus because it's unclear where it comes from, but average flight distance may be around 1000–3000, while average motorcycle travel distance will not be less than 15 miles (I would guess more than 50, really). So the difference between motorcycle and the plane might not be as big, but it will still be 15–150 times. Also I don't think that per trip is really useful metric
No I disagree. Per trip is really useful considering %chance of survival per accident in airplane vs cars, and also % of accidents per trip between planes & cars.
I just want to know, how likely am I going to die when I ride this thing to my destination today. I've ridden cars more than 50,000 times in my life and experienced about 30 accidents and I'm still alive, but it was barely 6 times where I took a plane but thankfully 0 accidents otherwise 99.99% I wouldn't be here.
Almost 50% of my family and friends btw have never took a plane in their lives, while the other 50% hardly travel with airplanes once every 6 years JUST to give you a hint how statistics are relative, skewed and meaningless from one person to another.
Statistics is skewed even more for cars, I travel by car less than 20 times per year now, and each ride is usually under 15 minutes, this would be very different rides from intercity/-state rides someone could do every day or every week and chances of being in an accident would also be very different
What are you even talking about? Which mode of transportation has the most deaths based on distance covered.
Meaning, if you want to drive from California to New York, you are more likely to die as a result of that trip, versus, if you took a train or plane.
If you want to judge this based on "per trip" or even "per hour". The data would be even more skewed, making airplanes seem even safer, and motorcycles and cars even more dangerous. Also. How would you even measure "per trip" or "per hour". At least with "per mile" you can measure it. Because vehicles have odometers that keeps track of distance covered. Meaning, you know how far the vehicle traveled before it turned into scrap metal.
here are estimates of death per trip driven from this meaningless stupid statistic in this post:
plane: 0.07×6,000×360÷10^9 ×100%= 0.0151% chance of dying per trip
car: 7.28×1x50÷10 ^ 9x100% = (3.64* 10^ -5)% chance of dying per trip
That means you're more likely to die on airplane trip more than 415 times compared to taking a car ride!
Assuming average people travel 6000 miles once a year in a plane carrying 360 people. while an average car passenger rides it 800 times a year 50 miles each.
If those numbers were exaggerated, still the number would still be something like 150 times more likely to die on airplane trip than a car ride.
I can argue those numbers are reaslitic to 99% of people I know in my life who travel once a year to a country 3000 miles away, but use their cars to drive 3 hrs back & forth total to work daily, then an additional 2 hrs shopping or delivering things for their families with total reaslitic average of 50 miles a day or 60k miles a year. Again, statistics are only helpfull relatively to your own data. In my case I want to know how likely am I going to die when I ride this thing today, and those are my actual numbers and data, and 90% of the people I personally know as well.
Another shocking statistic would be survival chance per accident:
Airplanes would be 99.99% deaths per accident , while cars would again be 0.01% or roughly 1 out 1000 accidents maybe idk..
Anyway.. these statistics I just came up with were rediculious because they are as just as accurate and realistic as the one in this post.
I didn't need you to tell me your numbers were bullshit, it was pretty obvious. So if you want to mald in your chair and be angry over a report you don't understand. That is your choice.
Though I'd recommend you read the report since that would be the best way of growing your understanding of the topic you are so intent on sharing your opinion on.
I edited my comment to calculate the chance of dying per trip riding an airplane vs riding a car using the same data in this study. even if my assumed numbers were exaggeratted it'd be 150 times more likely to die on airplane trip than a car trip. lol
The fact you don't see the problem with that statement speaks volume.
You assumed a bunch of numbers pulled from thin air, and applied some other numbers without considering the context or methodology of how they were obtained.
And you think that will provide you with informational data? Good job. You clearly know what you're doing. Keep it up.
no... read it above even quarter of my assumed numbers would still result in 100 times more likely to die. I do delivery work that's why I drive 70k+ miles / year or 50 miles a day on average and experieced so many accidents... etc.
you try it yourself and use that data and calculate % chance of death in an airplane ride vs a car ride. use your own numbers and you will still get to the same conclusion
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.
I wouldn't expect ferries to be so high compared to the other public transit options, do people go overboard that often, or is it if one sinks its a lot of deaths?
My best guess is that this is global data and there were some shoddy ferries and high profile ferry losses that resulted in many deaths. I'm in an area with a big ferry system and we have functionally 0 deaths due to the ferry system over a long period of time.
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)
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.
The stat is for passenger deaths. People jumping in front of the train are not passengers, so don’t count for that.
I think what’s likely to be a big cause of train passenger deaths is the derailments they sometimes have in India. Those trains tend to be extremely overcrowded so one derailment can cause a lot of deaths.
I seriously doubt walking would be the most deadly with this metric. Just anecdotally in my city, there are way more fatalities due to motor vehicle collisions than due to MV-pedestrian collisions, and a ton of people walk around every day
Motorcycles are dangerous AF. You are actually less likely to die driving drunk in a car than fully sober on motorcycle. I'm pretty sure most folks here consider drunk driving pretty irresponsible. There's a reason ER docs call those things "donorcycles"
Not so much that but more that motorcycles have much fewer inherent safety features compared to a car like fuckin' safety belts that keep you from flying head-first into a tree. You are 30 times more likely to die per mile driven on a motorcycle than in a car.
You’re playing Russian roulette with a theoretical hundred chamber revolver. Dude in a car puts in one bullet, spins, and pulls the trigger. Dude on a motorcycle puts in thirty before their turn. Most people watching would put a raincoat on before the motorcycle guy pulls.
You say it's bad because it normalizes by distance traveled, but you don't say why normalizing by distance is bad. It makes perfect sense to me as it treats all modes of transportation equally. It allows you to approximate the answer to, "if I have to travel a set distance to my destination then which mode of transportation is safest?"
It projects that motorcycles are dangerous by distance driven, however you drive a moyoorycle way less than a car, so I would like to compare to actually death numbers. Because I might do 1000 miles in my car in a week, but only 20 on my motorcycle. So am I more at risk? Or no, because I'm traveling 100x less miles. That's what I mean.
But that's the whole point of normalizing by distance traveled. If you drive your motorcycle 100x less and it still kills you, then that's evidence that driving motorcycles is more dangerous than cars.
I'd need to correlated with amount of deaths per vehicle and actual stats of real motorcycle distances.
I understand there is no safety cage and inherently less protection. But there is a skew here.
Like if we add deaths by riding a shopping cart and it happens once in one mile, then you have a billion deaths by this charts logic; The stats get skewed in small sample sizes.
There is not an evident skew, and you haven't been able to articulate the source of one.
The number of miles motorcycles are ridden and the number of motorcycle deaths is unfortunately not a small sample size, so your shopping cart example isn't really a great analogy.
2022 study, motorcycles accounted for 3.7% of all vehicles sold but only 0.7% of all miles travelled. It is too small a samples size to be a good comparison.
0.7% of all miles travelled is still a pretty fucking large number, infact, according to these numbers
0.7% off all vehicle miles in 2022 was still was 224 Billion miles
Because people don't take an airplane when traveling 3 miles. It's really not fair to compare a device designed to haul hundreds of people thousands of miles across oceans with something designed to carry a single person a few blocks. Airplanes and bikes aren't substitutes for each other.
It's like comparing my garden trowel with a commercial excavator. Yeah, thr excavator moves more dirt more quickly, but you don't use one to weed a garden or use a trowel to grade a building site.
I'd still measure both by ability to move dirt if my objective is to move dirt. This chart compares modes of transport; if your purpose for riding a bicycle is pleasure or cost or whatever then you can make your own personal adjustments, but if you want to decide what's the safest way to do a daily 10 mile commute then this chart will give you that.
They literally are substitutes. If planes didn't exist then more people would ride motorcycles for very long distances. They may even take their motorcycles on ferries to make their trips possible if they have to.
No, clearly not. But I've already explained how they are substitutes and you just ignored my point.
Not that they need to be substitutes in the first place. Any mode of transportation is going to be more or less dangerous than any other mode of transportation, and that alone is enough to compare them. You don't need to be able to literally substitute a plane for a motorcycle in every situation to analyze the differences in the danger between them.
I feel the chart is a way of comparing "how safer is it to drive from Houston to Orlando by motorcycle than by flying". It's not meant to say "a person is X% likely to die in a motorcycle accident across their lifetime vs. % by airplane".
197 replies
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
Hours of travel time would likely be a good fit too.
hours doesn’t come as close to the metric that you’d like though
the purpose of travel is to get from point a to point b, so you want to measure the likelihood of death when travelling the comparable trips
hours doesn’t really work because different modes of transport complete the trip in very different times. distance however is relatively similar
Except that a short trip is less risk exposure than a long trip.
400km by train is so much less risky than 200km by rocket.
Apples and oranges.
A 200km train ride is less risk exposure than a 400km train ride.
A plane isn't as versatile though. You can't go everywhere on a plane, train, or (to a lesser extent) bus, but you can in a car, motorcycle, or if you're committed, bicycle.
Go go gadget spitball math!
::: spoiler Sources for average transit mode speed
Source 1:
https://www.gigacalculator.com/articles/what-is-the-average-speed-of-different-modes-of-transportation/
Source 2:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-travel-speeds-in-each-survey-year-and-standardized-mode-speed_tbl1_338604360
Source 3:
https://wonderlearning.blog/real-average-speed-us-train-facts
:::
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
::: spoiler 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 = 1,000,000,000 / 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.
::: spoiler 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.
::: spoiler 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.
:::
My thought exactly, walking per distance is probably the most deadly mode of transport
[X] Doubt
Walking is what we evolved to do. While being a pedestrian in certain parts of cities is dangerous, tons of walking is done away from vehicles.
Maybe depends on where you are living, but you quite probably have the wrong impression.
In my country (Germany), less than 3000 people die each year in traffic overall, while already an estimated 4000 pedestrians die while simply using stairs.
So, "Stairway to Heaven" gains a whole different layer of meaning, as it seems... :-)
Goddamnit.
Yet again, I have to say:
"And people think Germans have no sense of humor."
... You got a chuckle out of me with that one, goddamnit, hahah!
I would expect that pedestrian walk far less distance than cars drive, so even a twofold difference in absolute numbers will disappear when normalised by distance. For instance there is a general advice of walking 10k paces every day which is about 7km, average car speed in the city should be around 30km/h, so even if we assume 30 minutes of commute every day (and this is too generous, I believe) it will be more than two times the distance people (should) walk
I don't think people commonly refer to people using the stairs as being pedestrians.
Thread started from ‘walking’, not from being a pedestrian, and stairs usually require exactly walking
Nah, you're just not creative enough
I'm guilty of that, I admit, there are so many more ways to
get wasteduse stairsCool story bro.
There are stairs outdoors though, where they are more likely called pedestrians. Those stairs are also affected by the wearher, such as rain or snow
My guess would be parachuting/skydiving/wing-gliding.
Parachuting/skydiving is incredibly low risk compared to the average person's perception. The us had 9 deaths last year in 3.8 million skydives.
Wing suit usage has a similar number, IF you don't include base jumpers, which you shouldn't, because it's fundamentally a very, very different sport that happens to use (almost) the same equipment. You wouldn't include each bump in a nascar race as an accident and lump it into driving statistics, I would hope, nor do the same for people hiking in the woods and people fist fighting bears in the woods.
Considering I travel a mile or two, give or take, on each canopy flight when I jump, that's 9 deaths in ~8 million miles. Wing suits have a much better glide ratio when flying, so that would change things up as well. I'm curious how that would hold up to walking. Using the other feller's number of 4000 pedestrian deaths (on stairs) in germany, and estimating they walk 3 miles a day in a country of ~83 million, that's 249 million miles, giving us 1.6x10^-5, while skydiving is 2.4x10^-6.
But really... who would consider those activities as a mode of transport anyway?
Huh, well I am apparently wrong then.
Thanks for the correction!
As to who would consider them a mode of transportation... ... James Bond? Ethan Hunt?
lol, it was meant as a joke.
I'm on lemmy...
what's a joke?
Uh, the US commuter train system?
Number of cycles (departure to arrival) would be a pretty decent metric.
Found some data on this. Certainly not a common way of measuring this. Looks like at least one of these is fatality by mode and doesn't take into account total percent of trips.
Doesn't appear to change anything. Flying remains the safest. Motorcycles remain the most dangerous.
Make sure to sign your donor cards!
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.
This doesn't work to compare that either, because highway travel has less intersections, where I would think most accidents happen.
TBF, surprise traffic congestion (ie. some more surprising than others) and similar situations wherein humans are likely to get agitated and thus make shitty, abrupt choices... Are right up there with intersections. 🤌🏼
The only logical conclusion is the faster you go the safer you are.
I've tried to tell the cops this, and did you know it didn't work.
No dice on my argument that I'm trying to keep myself warm via air friction like the space shuttle, either.
Given the difference between the first and other places, I don't believe that switching to time instead of length would actually change the significance of the top placement.
Any other reorder on the list is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
RIP my co worker and friend. It was 2001. You were the OG Bay Area techie. Empty pepsi cans and pizza delivery stacked sloppily on your desk. Smart AF and hard working, always laughing. Earning money loving living .
Riding your slim machine between lanes of SF traffic. Someone opened his car door for Lord knows what reason.
Your girlfriend was inconsolable at your funeral
I'm not crying, you're crying!
There's a reason lane-splitting is illegal in many jurisdictions. It's still a tragic loss, but your friend made the active decision to operate a vehicle that was already more dangerous in an even more dangerous way.
No doubt it was reckless and close to suicide
Only the young are immortal
Until we're not.
Neil Peart, yet another RIP what is this with data visualization emotions and death
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtt0MUB93Ms
Also, I gotta say: there are few usernames that, if one stumbled into a room where it was being chanted by a circle of schoolchildren, would be a good sign of cult activity in the area. Yours is one of them —to the tune of Duck, Duck, Goose, of course.
Sorry, what?NM, it's late. My bad. 🖖🏼
There's a reason that drugs are illegal in many jurisdictions. It's still a tragic loss, but those junkies made the active decision to operate a needle that is already dangerous in an even more dangerous way.
Dude, take a step back and look at data, not the crappy chain of thought you call logic. Accidents involving injuries go down when lane splitting is made legal.
Oh, my bad. I wasn't aware that lane splitting was addictive, a symptom of depression, and a vector for the exploitation of vulnerable people.
Exactly right. Lane splitting, when legalized and regulated, is safer, more efficient, and frowned at by the general populace because they refuse to listen to the experts on it. Sounds a lot like our regulations on 'illegal substances,' doesn't it?
Your vehicle doesn’t make you special; follow the same rules as everyone else on the road.
Yaaaaaawn. I suppose bicycles should have seat belts then, aye? California, montana, utah, and other places have made lane splitting legal. They are following the same rules.
Bicyclists are almost as bad as not following traffic laws; I watched a motorized one run a red light yesterday. When I hit that asshole, it’s my fault even though they ran the red.
Glad I don’t live there.
This is why AMAB (All Motorcyclists Are Bastards)
https://old.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/xa40c0/the_only_smart_one_in_the_group
https://old.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/zukndn/to_speed
https://old.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/10in97i/idiot_on_a_bike_splitting_lanes_at_well_over
https://old.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/10lc59r/to_lane_split
https://old.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/1160bdm/bikers_close_the_highway_and_stop_traffic_flow_in
https://old.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/11rglp1/really_tho_why_did_she_stop
https://old.reddit.com/r/trashy/comments/12zzffh/asshats_ruining_morning_commute
What about death of people other than passengers?
Shhh, don't wake them!
Didn't realise deaths were so frequent on ferries.
My guess is part of what’s throwing that statistic off is the relatively short journeys of most ferries.
Maybe per hours of travel would be better? It would also make airplanes less of an outlier.
Airplanes should then be split to “general aviation” and “commercial aviation” to assuage people’s fears. General aviation is a lot riskier than flying commercial.
The ferries in the Mediterranean are know for their insecurity.
bruh
If you've seen Steven Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds', you'll know ferries can be quite perilous.
They would have been safer with Spiderman around!
probably ppl falling off or cars on board catching fire
It might even include medical emergencies while on board.
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).
Other vehicles on the roads and not wearing helmets are the two biggest dangers for motorcyclists.
How essential wearing a helmet is to these bikes is one of the only thing that keeps me from using it. I'll wear a lightweight road bicycle helmet reluctantly but the kind of helmet you need to ride a motorcycle is so uncomfortable to me, and represents the danger, that I'd rather just drive.
If you cannot stand a helmet then not riding is certainly a good choice.
Modern motorcycle helmets are way more comfortable than they were a couple decades ago though.
I cannot stand wearing a motorcycle helmet. I don't even like wearing a bicycle helmet that isn't light weight costing $70+ minimum.
I'd recommend to try a few helmets. I once bought the cheapest helmet the store had to offer ... only to return it next day.
Please ... don't buy a helmet on Amazon. Try it out, find one that fits, take it for a test drive.
I bought a helmet from Amazon.... Idk if it fits
Silverado running a red light smears both equally
What country? Why is bicycle missing?
America, because nobody else has nearly the fatality rate per mile. SEA has more fatalities per capita, but that's because they have 100x more bikes per capita.
The average american motorcyclist only rides as a hobby, they drive a car the rest of the time, and they're either driving a racing bike or a 900 lb Harley. This isn't a recipe for competent riding.
I guess because it's insignificant or the graph only includes motored vehicles.
I'll be honest, this will be skewed heavily by most motorcycles are not designed for two or more people
And most motorcyclists know that, and NEVER have any passengers, which self-selects for the risk takers heavily.
Also heavily skewed by the fact that most motorcycle deaths are not caused by the driver, but by other road users not looking, and doing stupid shit like taking a turn blind at 50mph then running the motorcyclist over.
I've been riding motorcycles Since I was 12. I'm in my 50's. I've never had a road accident, despite having ridden crotch rockets for a few years. I've had a few dirt ones, but without major breakage.
I have very rarely carried someone, especially because many passengers will intuitively counteract your leanings.
I'm now considering quitting, because I'm aware that I don't have the reflexes or 360° degree awareness I used to have.
A lot of people shouldn't be riding, they have a car mentality.
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.
...
Don't ride with a loonitick.
Well, that sucks :(
Yeah, speaking as a rider from the USA it's a mixed bag. If you ride safe (licensed and know what you are doing, not drunk, wear a helmet, and assume you are invisible) it's orders of magnitude more safe than the statistics say. Sadly, there are a lot of reckless riders dying on bikes.
Still, a ton of drivers will absolutely drive like you are invisible and just plow into you. You also have to ride carefully and be constantly aware of your bike and your surroundings. Plan for bad situations as you see them forming even though most of the time nothing happens. Small mistakes can be negated by four wheels but won't be forgiven on two.
I didn't start until the pandemic, which gave me an opportunity to work remotely for a time and save money. I have enjoyed riding. The motivation to be present in the moment for the sake of safety is a bit zen for me. In a car I feel like I can arrive at work deep in thought about the horrors of the world and not even remember how I got there. Admittedly, as I got more comfortable on the bike, my mind can still wander but it's easier to snap back and focus on not dying on the bike.
I've had this experience in a miata and Fiero. Low roofline + small car = invisibility cloke :(
Yeah that's always key to these stats and it's never reported. If you're not drunk when you get behind the wheel of a vehicle the safety by a lot.
This is especially true of motorcycles, where in Western countries they often go hand in hand with the time honored pastime of, "Let's all ride our Harleys to the bar and get absolutely sideways, and then ride our Harleys to another bar." I do know for sure that a large portion of motorcycle wrecks in general are single vehicle incidents, i.e. the rider ran out of skill and simply ate shit into a ditch, tree, guardrail, or the nearest Jersey wall.
I'd also be interested to see the source to determine what the geographical range of this is, i.e. whether or not it includes Southeast Asia where basically the entire population conducts all of its affairs from the back of a small motorbike.
At the end of the day, if you slam into something on your bike you're pretty much guaranteed to be worse off than slamming into the same thing in a car or a bus. But you're still not getting me off of mine.
It doesn't change the stats in the slightest, you're more likely to die on a bike, it doesn't really make any difference who's at fault if you're dead. 90% of the accidents being caused by unobservant car drivers won't save you.
It does because if you know you aren't going to drive your bike when drunk (and other reckless driving factors) you will be safer than the numbers indicate.
You have a source for this or did you make up this 90% number on the spot? Would be nice to have actual numbers on this since elsewhere in the thread someone else is saying over half of motorcycle fatalities are single vehicle accidents, which means it's biker could potentially have done something to avoid it.
Source
Source
An article noting some highlights
You are more likely to die riding a bike than other forms of transportation but riding responsibly and defensively will absolutely change the severity of the stats.
A driver could still plow through you and you are still more likely to die - I'll absolutely concede that. You are just way, way more likely to die if you don't know how to ride (unlicensed), are impaired by alcohol or something, wear no helmet or other gear, and/or ride recklessly or carelessly.
The stats are the stats, driving a car everywhere at 15mph and covering it in airbags would probably change the car stats as well. If everyone drove perfectly and maintained their vehicles properly then we'd get a nice flat line.
You're way more likely to die if you don't know how to drive a car or do so drunk as well. The graph is showing the relative unsafeness of various vehicles as a whole, the fact being drunk or dumb on a bike has an outsize impact on killing bikers emphasises the fact it's less safe.
I've absolutely nothing against bikes or bikers and I'd suspect that overall biker's deaths are likely to be more self contained and have lesser impact on other road users.
Yes. As a whole. As an average of the entire population.
Which I acknowledge and don't dispute. Bikes are inherently less safe than cars.
Cars have a lot of mandatory safety features like airbags, crumple zones, and seatbelts. They have four wheel stability and four points of contact on the road. They are relatively forgiving when it comes to mistakes and crashes.
Bikes don't even have universal helmet laws in every state... and if they do mandate helmets, often a brain bucket is legally sufficient. However, with only two points of contact, and a potentially high rate of acceleration, it is much easier to lose control and crash, especially if you are riding recklessly or without experience.
My point is that inexperience and recklessness can lead to a fatal crash much more easily on a motorcycle and likely contribute to the statistics for motorcycle fatalities more than it does for car fatalities.
Basically, squids kind of juice the numbers and make them more scary. It's not just squids - riding is not as safe as driving. Still, if you plan to ride responsibly your odds will be better than the stats suggest. Yes, the same logic applies to anything, but I believe it applies to bikes more than it applies to cars.
Doing hard things is harder to do. This doesn't mean you can't successfully do hard things it just means you have to try harder to do them. Taking a shortcut often ends in failure. In this case, failure can mean injured or dead.
And no, I'm not trying to say I'm cool and skilled because I ride a bike. I'm not yet that experienced or skilled on a bike... but I ride responsibly. I take it slow. I wear protective gear. I'm aware of my limits and I push them carefully.
Interestly, its not really inattentive car drivers that make motorcycling so dangerous.
Because of their small size, single headlight and rapidly changing speed, the human brain can't accurate identify, and track them. Especially at night or in adverse weather conditions. So drivers cut them off all the time because the brain does not process the information correctly.
Combine that with the average aggressive driving, speeding, tailgating, and other dumbass dangerous behaviors that I see motorcyclist do daily and the death rate is shockingly low in my opinion.
I spend a lot of time driving and have seen around 20 motorcycle accidents happen over the years. Only one was another drivers fault and not caused by the absolute stupidity of the motorcyclist.
In the Netherlands, bicyclists were always second place in deaths just behind people in cars. Most accidents which causes death are between a car and a bicycle. When the e-bike got trendy. We've seen a big spike in bicycle deaths in 2023 causing it to be the nr 1 cause of death in traffic. The Fat-bike is a big problem here. Its trendy among kids and realy easy to disable speed limiters. Percentage wise I couldn't find anything this fast but it does look like people in cars just don't see them or pay attention to them as the drive faster. I think cameras checking the surroundings is the best hope in getting those numbers down.
This is really sad, I don't want to drive a tin can of death just so I am more protected from others driving tin cans of death :(
At least I don't drive e-bike and use bike lanes ¯\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Are there statistics to back this up? Anecdotally, I see 10 motorcycles racing, illegally riding side-by-side in one lane, not signaling, speeding, and swerving around vehicles across multiple lanes for every 1 that I see driving safely.
Good stuff, thanks for the info.
Comparing US statistics to Dutch ones makes no sense. Their roads are several times more deadly than European ones regardless of vehicle.
Furthermore not all of their states have mandatory helmets (!) whereas over here it's rare to see someone missing something other than pants. Except scooters, scooter riders are under the impression that they don't ride a motorcycle and that flip-flops are appropriate apparel.
Then there's a lot you can do as a motorcyclist to mitigate risk. Riding safely is one (not everyone seems capable of that, there's quite a spread in riding behaviors, but also an obvious bias in which ones you'll remember seeing on your commute). A strict no-alcohol policy is another, and not riding at night on weekends. You can also wear extra safety gear such as a high-vis airbag.
Also licensing requirements. Oh and American motorcycles don't have to be equipped with ABS. They be crazy over there.
No, I'm in the US; that's what I see here. I just use a Dutch instance.
They sure are fun though. Sometimes the risk is worth it.
Fairies are 3rd on the list.
Shhh! They prefer Fey-Folk.
What percentage of plane deaths are snake related?
Nearly all of them.
Just fly on a weekend. It's typically worse on Monday to Friday planes.
I wonder how these stats would change if there weren’t cars on the road. I mean its pretty obvious if a car and a motorcycle crash the motorcycle’s gonna have it worst.
The numbers would go down by half, which is meaningful, but also way less than you'd want it to. I can't be arsed to pull up the NHTSA data url right now, but I use the factoid all the time when I talk to people about my riding: give or take 54% of motorcycle deaths are single vehicle accidents. Of those, the vast majority involve alcohol or speeding. So if I avoid alcohol I cut my chances by a large factor.
Speeding is slightly fuzzier, because the statistics are built from crash reports by police, and you can never know if they take the word of a witness that a motorcycle passed at a 4mph difference in speed, which, c'mon, is not the same as someone whizzing down a canyon road at 20mph or more over the limit.
My favorite "factoid" is that the -oid part originally means "resembling," like a humanoid is something that only looks human, so technically a factoid would be something that only resembles fact. However, I'm not a dirty prescriptivist and I understood perfectly what you meant, so please carry on.
Presciptivism is where it's at, broseidon! I use factoid for when something seems like a fact, but you can't verify it right then. I know the internet often uses it for something quoted so much that people take it as fact even though it's false.
Wikipedia just hates us all. I don't want it to be a brief truth, waaah!
I hate the concept of "brief truth". The Germans probably have a word for it. things can stop being true. Everything is a brief truth on a long enough timeline. By this definition "the moon exists" is a factoid because very briefly from now (on a cosmological timeline) that's practically already false. Bah!
motorcycle vs. motorcycle is gonna be like medieval jousting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_Rash_%281991_video_game%29
Didn't you know? This is what me and my buddies get up to on Saturday nights.
Motorcycle cops think they're hot shit because they can weave between a bunch of cones. Amateurs. Lets see you try to work the throttle, brake, and clutch on a dirtbike while also wielding a 10' long piece of PVC pipe with a boxing glove on the end of it.
Or an average day in south east asia
I was in a bike accident once. I walked away with cartilage inflammation but the driver ended up breaking a different bone in 3 out of 4 limbs, he spent a month in the hospital. I told myself I was too old for that shit and definitely too young to die from it.
Scariest moment of my life and I'm never ever getting on a motorcycle again. Fact is I got very very lucky. Wasn't even our fault, an other motorcycle came into our lane and hit us. They were drunk but if it would have been a car or if we were going faster, we would be dead.
Were you the passenger on the motorcycle? Who is the "driver"?
Ya exactly. I ended up flying off and bouncing a few times in the dirt on the side of the road, but he actually fell with the bike. My friend was the one driving (this was almost a decade ago).
How is a bus less than a train?
Suicides?
Haven't you seen Murder of the Orient Express?
Murder mysteries are the #1 cause of railway-relsted deaths.
Just guessing, the lower speed might help.
Edit: found a statistic that says otherwise. Translated from german. Original source
Car: 1.57
→ 2.53 per billion miles
Bus: 0.13
→ 0.21 per billion miles
Train: 0.03
→ 0.048 per billion miles
Airplane: 0.01
→ 0.016 per billion miles
Bicycle: 9.8
→ 15.77 per billion miles
Ship: 0.1
→ 0.16 per billion miles
Tram: 0.19
→ 0.31 per billion miles
Motorcycle: 46.5
→ 74.83 per billion miles
Edit 2: Interesting how my german statistic shows way lower numbers than the original statistic.
Maybe the original was for some specific country with worse road conditions than Germany. Or it was from a different time, or wasn't real at all, dunno
The factor is about 3 (75 to 212 motorcycle related deaths), that seems a plausible deviation between different countries.
That and busses also carry fewer people. Train accidents are rare but when they happen they're horrific because of speed and the sheer number of people involved.
Train crashes into train, everyone dies. Bus crashes into car, car occupant dies, bus passengers survive (mostly).
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.
My guess for ferries would be that most ferry trips are very short. That means less total travel per trip, so for the same risk per trip it gets much higher risk per distance.
As someone who lives on an island, and regularly takes a sea ferry though unprotected waters, (ie not through a bay or harbor, waves have 100s of miles to build) that stat makes sense to me.
Id guess a lot of that could be attributed to people falling and injuring themselves.
As my dad would have said, "Landlubbers don't respect the Sea."
That floor may be shifting 6+' in one direction or another, and people without their sea legs will be getting up for the head, snack bar, or just to walk off the seasickness, then falling as the boat shifts.
And theres a lot of metal, and protruding metal (bulkheads, cleats, even just the metal floors and walls, etc). Even when the sea is calm as glass, the boat can still shudder or bounce randomly as it hits a random bit of turbulence. And its common for small kids to be running around or, say, an elderly person walking with a cane, not holding onto a railing to take a spill.
Finally, theres generally going to be a wait for advanced medical treatment, until you make it to port. Ive seen one person med evac-ed out, by helicopter, so its possible, but that was a crewman who's arm was amputed by machinery. For the average concussion/ broken bone, theres only so much the ships medic can do, and you're waiting til the ferry is docked for an ambulance.
The other risk is lost at sea incidents. Ferries tend to have pretty good fencing/ railings to prevent people falling overboard, but people do dumb shit. Like climbing or straddling those railings. And if its even 15 minutes before someone reports you, at 12mph, thats already 3 miles the boat's traveled, making a large (and constantly growing) search area to find you in, and you're a tiny speck spot in a vast sea. I know our ferries have only had one in my lifetime (and it was deemed a potential suicide- solo traveler who turned out to have no arrival plans like lodging arranged, went missing off anight ferry)
I'd consider those driving motorcycles to be more prone to take risky maneuvers.
Wonder how the graph would change if they drove like regular commuters to the destinations (e.g. not weaving at traffic lights, not speeding for the thrill, no wheelies and other stunts).
I'd be interested to know if motor scooters/Vespas were lumped in with motorcycles. I'd wager a 99cc scooter has a lower mortality rate than a crotch rocket or a Harley.
Weaving in at traffic ligths, aka lane splitting is significantly safer for the motorcyclist, since at a red traffic light the most probable accident is getting rear-ended, which is way deadlier for a motorcyclist.
Ok. Then weaving during flowing traffic like ski slalom.
No need for that, right?
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?
I guess it depends how many billion people were on the ferry when someone died
On the other hand, most ferry trips aren't that long, distance-wise.
The extra passengers make the ferries go down in the first place, so there's that...
Probably same with busses. Half a century old going down a mountain with no barriers.
can we get this data "per trip"
because I have a feeling planes would not look nearly as safe.
Per hour traveled makes the most sense imo, otherwise you bias towards modes of transport used for short trips instead since they spend less time in danger.
true this graph can suck my ballocks. "pAsSeNgEr MiLeS" airplanes do 360x6000 passenger miles in one trip and avarge people hardly travel once a year. car owners do maybe 800 trips per year 50 passenger miles each.
What's the objection? If you're gonna be travelling from A to B, you, a passenger, will cover C miles, and the odds of biting it scale accordingly. "Per trip" would mean you can halve a car's odds by stopping at a gas station and calling that a "trip".
Per trip makes motorcycle more comparable with plane. Per mile makes motorcycle more comparable with car. They're just inherently different, so comparing them is awkward.
You can multiply this by the average trip distance to get per trip.
This statistics is a bit sus because it's unclear where it comes from, but average flight distance may be around 1000–3000, while average motorcycle travel distance will not be less than 15 miles (I would guess more than 50, really). So the difference between motorcycle and the plane might not be as big, but it will still be 15–150 times. Also I don't think that per trip is really useful metric
No I disagree. Per trip is really useful considering %chance of survival per accident in airplane vs cars, and also % of accidents per trip between planes & cars.
I just want to know, how likely am I going to die when I ride this thing to my destination today. I've ridden cars more than 50,000 times in my life and experienced about 30 accidents and I'm still alive, but it was barely 6 times where I took a plane but thankfully 0 accidents otherwise 99.99% I wouldn't be here.
Almost 50% of my family and friends btw have never took a plane in their lives, while the other 50% hardly travel with airplanes once every 6 years JUST to give you a hint how statistics are relative, skewed and meaningless from one person to another.
Statistics is skewed even more for cars, I travel by car less than 20 times per year now, and each ride is usually under 15 minutes, this would be very different rides from intercity/-state rides someone could do every day or every week and chances of being in an accident would also be very different
How many collisions have you been in? I've been in 3 car collisions, 2 of which had injuries. I've been in 0 flight collisions/crashes.
how many trips have you made in a car? how many flights?
What are you even talking about? Which mode of transportation has the most deaths based on distance covered.
Meaning, if you want to drive from California to New York, you are more likely to die as a result of that trip, versus, if you took a train or plane.
If you want to judge this based on "per trip" or even "per hour". The data would be even more skewed, making airplanes seem even safer, and motorcycles and cars even more dangerous. Also. How would you even measure "per trip" or "per hour". At least with "per mile" you can measure it. Because vehicles have odometers that keeps track of distance covered. Meaning, you know how far the vehicle traveled before it turned into scrap metal.
here are estimates of death per trip driven from this meaningless stupid statistic in this post:
plane: 0.07×6,000×360÷10^9 ×100%= 0.0151% chance of dying per trip
car: 7.28×1x50÷10 ^ 9x100% = (3.64* 10^ -5)% chance of dying per trip
That means you're more likely to die on airplane trip more than 415 times compared to taking a car ride!
Assuming average people travel 6000 miles once a year in a plane carrying 360 people. while an average car passenger rides it 800 times a year 50 miles each.
If those numbers were exaggerated, still the number would still be something like 150 times more likely to die on airplane trip than a car ride.
I can argue those numbers are reaslitic to 99% of people I know in my life who travel once a year to a country 3000 miles away, but use their cars to drive 3 hrs back & forth total to work daily, then an additional 2 hrs shopping or delivering things for their families with total reaslitic average of 50 miles a day or 60k miles a year. Again, statistics are only helpfull relatively to your own data. In my case I want to know how likely am I going to die when I ride this thing today, and those are my actual numbers and data, and 90% of the people I personally know as well.
Another shocking statistic would be survival chance per accident:
Airplanes would be 99.99% deaths per accident , while cars would again be 0.01% or roughly 1 out 1000 accidents maybe idk..
Anyway.. these statistics I just came up with were rediculious because they are as just as accurate and realistic as the one in this post.
The statistics in the post has a source. It is cited as Ian Savage. And it doesn't take much to find the report these statistics are based upon.
https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/ipsavage/436-manuscript.pdf
I didn't need you to tell me your numbers were bullshit, it was pretty obvious. So if you want to mald in your chair and be angry over a report you don't understand. That is your choice.
Though I'd recommend you read the report since that would be the best way of growing your understanding of the topic you are so intent on sharing your opinion on.
I edited my comment to calculate the chance of dying per trip riding an airplane vs riding a car using the same data in this study. even if my assumed numbers were exaggeratted it'd be 150 times more likely to die on airplane trip than a car trip. lol
The fact you don't see the problem with that statement speaks volume.
You assumed a bunch of numbers pulled from thin air, and applied some other numbers without considering the context or methodology of how they were obtained.
And you think that will provide you with informational data? Good job. You clearly know what you're doing. Keep it up.
no... read it above even quarter of my assumed numbers would still result in 100 times more likely to die. I do delivery work that's why I drive 70k+ miles / year or 50 miles a day on average and experieced so many accidents... etc.
you try it yourself and use that data and calculate % chance of death in an airplane ride vs a car ride. use your own numbers and you will still get to the same conclusion
Motorcycle accidents have become very frequent in some twenty years in my region, with Thailand being on top.
https://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/asean/2024/11/04/thailand-leads-southeast-asia-in-road-fatalities-un-special-envoy-warns/
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.
I wouldn't expect ferries to be so high compared to the other public transit options, do people go overboard that often, or is it if one sinks its a lot of deaths?
My best guess is that this is global data and there were some shoddy ferries and high profile ferry losses that resulted in many deaths. I'm in an area with a big ferry system and we have functionally 0 deaths due to the ferry system over a long period of time.
motorcyclists are the prime organ donors.
Highly depends on the speed and packaging of the organs' current owner at the moment of the crash.
What about pedestrians, wankblog?
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.
You don't know what mods I have made to my car
in the style of Fast and the Furious 9
Get in, loser, we're going to the sun.
I'll still take those odds.
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.
Pretty sure trains are much safer for passengers. But they get more suicides on the rails.
The stat is for passenger deaths. People jumping in front of the train are not passengers, so don’t count for that.
I think what’s likely to be a big cause of train passenger deaths is the derailments they sometimes have in India. Those trains tend to be extremely overcrowded so one derailment can cause a lot of deaths.
Well, nice knowing you all 😂
I don't think miles is a fair measure.
Airplanes often do 5000 miles in one trip.
Would be curious to see how safe walking is per mile. Probably the most deadly
I seriously doubt walking would be the most deadly with this metric. Just anecdotally in my city, there are way more fatalities due to motor vehicle collisions than due to MV-pedestrian collisions, and a ton of people walk around every day
i think per trip would be best, but it won't account for trip length.
and they refuse to wear helmets.
In what backward country are you not obligated to wear a helmet?
State of Illinois. No helmets required. It is unbelievable.
Motorcycles are dangerous AF. You are actually less likely to die driving drunk in a car than fully sober on motorcycle. I'm pretty sure most folks here consider drunk driving pretty irresponsible. There's a reason ER docs call those things "donorcycles"
… because you will get hit by a drunken car driver while riding, it seems
Not so much that but more that motorcycles have much fewer inherent safety features compared to a car like fuckin' safety belts that keep you from flying head-first into a tree. You are 30 times more likely to die per mile driven on a motorcycle than in a car.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813732
You’re playing Russian roulette with a theoretical hundred chamber revolver. Dude in a car puts in one bullet, spins, and pulls the trigger. Dude on a motorcycle puts in thirty before their turn. Most people watching would put a raincoat on before the motorcycle guy pulls.
That is a fuckton more risk.
I understand why, just find the wording very poor
Still, thank you for the links to statistics
This chart sucks because you typically put way less miles on a bike, so a single death in 10000 miles, balloons when you try to make it per billion.
I'd like to see total deaths by vehicle type, to contrast the skew
You say it's bad because it normalizes by distance traveled, but you don't say why normalizing by distance is bad. It makes perfect sense to me as it treats all modes of transportation equally. It allows you to approximate the answer to, "if I have to travel a set distance to my destination then which mode of transportation is safest?"
It projects that motorcycles are dangerous by distance driven, however you drive a moyoorycle way less than a car, so I would like to compare to actually death numbers. Because I might do 1000 miles in my car in a week, but only 20 on my motorcycle. So am I more at risk? Or no, because I'm traveling 100x less miles. That's what I mean.
But that's the whole point of normalizing by distance traveled. If you drive your motorcycle 100x less and it still kills you, then that's evidence that driving motorcycles is more dangerous than cars.
I'd need to correlated with amount of deaths per vehicle and actual stats of real motorcycle distances.
I understand there is no safety cage and inherently less protection. But there is a skew here.
Like if we add deaths by riding a shopping cart and it happens once in one mile, then you have a billion deaths by this charts logic; The stats get skewed in small sample sizes.
There is not an evident skew, and you haven't been able to articulate the source of one.
The number of miles motorcycles are ridden and the number of motorcycle deaths is unfortunately not a small sample size, so your shopping cart example isn't really a great analogy.
2022 study, motorcycles accounted for 3.7% of all vehicles sold but only 0.7% of all miles travelled. It is too small a samples size to be a good comparison.
0.7% of all miles travelled is still a pretty fucking large number, infact, according to these numbers 0.7% off all vehicle miles in 2022 was still was 224 Billion miles
Because people don't take an airplane when traveling 3 miles. It's really not fair to compare a device designed to haul hundreds of people thousands of miles across oceans with something designed to carry a single person a few blocks. Airplanes and bikes aren't substitutes for each other.
It's like comparing my garden trowel with a commercial excavator. Yeah, thr excavator moves more dirt more quickly, but you don't use one to weed a garden or use a trowel to grade a building site.
I'd still measure both by ability to move dirt if my objective is to move dirt. This chart compares modes of transport; if your purpose for riding a bicycle is pleasure or cost or whatever then you can make your own personal adjustments, but if you want to decide what's the safest way to do a daily 10 mile commute then this chart will give you that.
You gonna do a 10-mile commute on an airplane?
You use the lines of the chart that are relevant to the kind of journey you want to make. This should not need explaining.
You're just being argumentative for its own sake.
They literally are substitutes. If planes didn't exist then more people would ride motorcycles for very long distances. They may even take their motorcycles on ferries to make their trips possible if they have to.
You gonna bike across an ocean? You gonna take an airplane to the grocery store?
None of the other listed modes of transportation would be used to cross the ocean (depending on how generous you want to be with "ferry").
But for domestic travel, no planes would mean more trips by automobile. And inevitably, some of this would translate to more motorcycles.
No, clearly not. But I've already explained how they are substitutes and you just ignored my point.
Not that they need to be substitutes in the first place. Any mode of transportation is going to be more or less dangerous than any other mode of transportation, and that alone is enough to compare them. You don't need to be able to literally substitute a plane for a motorcycle in every situation to analyze the differences in the danger between them.
Pick your destination, now ignore all forms of transport that are obviously unsuitable. Now off you go.
Should include walking/cycling but health benefits are harder to factor in as I am pretty sure the risk of death is lower than the health benefits.
plenty of people use planes to travel to nearby destinations that just don't have road or waterway access
I feel the chart is a way of comparing "how safer is it to drive from Houston to Orlando by motorcycle than by flying". It's not meant to say "a person is X% likely to die in a motorcycle accident across their lifetime vs. % by airplane".
Keep in mind these are motorcycles specifically it looks like, not pedal bikes or e-bikes.