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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... More than one death pe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... More than one death per 100 million miles gives worse than 1:10 000 odds per 10 000 miles. If you do not want to take 1/10 000 death risks, you would need to limit your lifetime car travels to way less than 10 000 miles.

elcapitan 10y ago
As I said below, this is not comparable. 1 death in 100M miles means most likely stupid behavior leading to an accident. That's pretty ok. You can mitigate that risk. Don't drink and drive. Don't drive when tired. Don't drive too fast, avoid fast streets/highways (where most of the accidents happen). This is different from a setting where something you can't influence at all can fail and then kill you. The probability of the traffic accident is conditional pretty much on the individual case. Having said that, I don't own or drive a car ;)
- Scarblac 10y ago
  > Don't drink and drive. Don't drive when tired. Don't drive too fast, And particularly, don't share roads with any drivers doing any of the above.
- beefield 10y ago
  Well, I would argue that in most so called extreme sports the mitigatable (is that a word?) risks play relatively much larger role than in traffic. You can't mitigate a drunken driver colliding with you, but it is precisely you who makes the knots in the climbing rope and packs your parachute correctly. And, given so small probabilities, even if you tell yourself that you are mitigating the risk by not drinking&driving, it is virtually impossible for you to know that you do not have some other habit that increases your death probability to the average levels or above. Are your reaction times slower (or faster) than other peoples? Do you hitch a hike always in a car that is properly taken care of? Etc. And if you do not own a car, your lifetime cycling quota in the US cycling environment is less than 2 000 miles[0]. Even less mitigating other peoples' mistakes than in a car. [0] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/06/13/bicycling-the-safest-form-of-transportation/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/06/13/bicycling-the-safe...
  - elcapitan 10y ago
    The discussion was explicitly about something that you can't mitigate, the failure of necessary components. This doesn't change by making better knots when rock-climbing (as far as I know).
    - erkkie 10y ago
      You can always mitigate (duplicate safety not good enough, add triple, etc), at the end it comes down to risk/reward ratio and what's considered an acceptable risk. As a climber (and other extreme sports) I'm acutely aware of different tradeoffs I make in regards to safety/convenience/thrill and yet the couple of near death experiences I've had all involved traffic and unmitigable behaviour of other drivers.
- monsieurbanana 10y ago
  > The probability of the traffic accident is conditional pretty much on the individual case. Without knowing anything about car accidents, I would say you're very off on that assumption. Everytime there's an accident involving more than one car, it's unlikely that all drivers involved were at fault.
- nkrisc 10y ago
  Unfortunately, one doesn't need to own or even be driving a car to still be injured or killed by one. There are many aspects of cave diving that one can influence (checking and servicing equipment, having redundancies) to be safer, as well as many thing about driving and cars that one can't influence (who else is driving around you, the state of mind of who's driving the car/bus you're in) I think the real difference is not necessarily how safe or dangerous one or the other is, but one is a risk that is practically necessary to function in society while the other is not.
- lamontcg 10y ago
  There's an awful lot of stupid behavior death in cave diving as well. A lot of the risks are mitigated by proper gear and training, just like driving. Don't dive too deep on air to avoid nitrogen narcosis (similar to don't drink and drive). Dive with a buddy. Dive with team and individual redundancy. Do not silt out the cave (the way you kick and your proficiency in the water has a lot to do with this). Always have a continuous guideline to the surface. Reserve at least 1/3 of your gas for emergencies. And in practice there's other rules -- like you should always sight-see or use cameras/videos on the way into the cave. On the exit you should be more efficient (effectively this usually means you use 1/3rd of your gas to enter, and only 1/4 of your gas to exit, which means you have a higher buffer should anything go wrong). The redundancy figures quoted are also low. I've done around 200 cave dives. I've had one hose blow on me in a cave and therefore lost a regulator. I can't think of any other local divers who have had a similar situation where they've actually needed to exit a cave with a failed regulator. I would say the failure rate is most likely closer to 1 in 1000. But even taking 1 in 200 as the failure rate, the chances of three failures are 1 in 8,000,000 and even then you can buddy breathe off of a single remaining regulator and you should still have gas supply to exit (the remaining third is there for that kind of situation). And now I'm more careful to not only get my regulator serviced but to be more aware of changing out hoses and to do so before cave trips if there's signs of wear. Generally with cave fatalities there are blatant issues, such as failure to maintain a continuous guideline leading to navigation errors leading to simply running out of gas because nobody was paying any attention. There's only one known cave diving fatality where all the rules were followed and diver still died, which was the cave diving fatality that killed Parker Turner.
arcticfox 10y ago
So, for the amount of miles I drive per year (10,000), I could go on a single dive for the same risk. Good to know, I guess?

elcapitan 10y ago

As I said below, this is not comparable. 1 death in 100M miles means most likely stupid behavior leading to an accident. That's pretty ok. You can mitigate that risk. Don't drink and drive. Don't drive when tired. Don't drive too fast, avoid fast streets/highways (where most of the accidents happen). This is different from a setting where something you can't influence at all can fail and then kill you. The probability of the traffic accident is conditional pretty much on the individual case. Having said that, I don't own or drive a car ;)

Scarblac 10y ago
> Don't drink and drive. Don't drive when tired. Don't drive too fast, And particularly, don't share roads with any drivers doing any of the above.
beefield 10y ago
Well, I would argue that in most so called extreme sports the mitigatable (is that a word?) risks play relatively much larger role than in traffic. You can't mitigate a drunken driver colliding with you, but it is precisely you who makes the knots in the climbing rope and packs your parachute correctly. And, given so small probabilities, even if you tell yourself that you are mitigating the risk by not drinking&driving, it is virtually impossible for you to know that you do not have some other habit that increases your death probability to the average levels or above. Are your reaction times slower (or faster) than other peoples? Do you hitch a hike always in a car that is properly taken care of? Etc. And if you do not own a car, your lifetime cycling quota in the US cycling environment is less than 2 000 miles[0]. Even less mitigating other peoples' mistakes than in a car. [0] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/06/13/bicycling-the-safest-form-of-transportation/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/06/13/bicycling-the-safe...
- elcapitan 10y ago
  The discussion was explicitly about something that you can't mitigate, the failure of necessary components. This doesn't change by making better knots when rock-climbing (as far as I know).
  - erkkie 10y ago
    You can always mitigate (duplicate safety not good enough, add triple, etc), at the end it comes down to risk/reward ratio and what's considered an acceptable risk. As a climber (and other extreme sports) I'm acutely aware of different tradeoffs I make in regards to safety/convenience/thrill and yet the couple of near death experiences I've had all involved traffic and unmitigable behaviour of other drivers.
monsieurbanana 10y ago
> The probability of the traffic accident is conditional pretty much on the individual case. Without knowing anything about car accidents, I would say you're very off on that assumption. Everytime there's an accident involving more than one car, it's unlikely that all drivers involved were at fault.
nkrisc 10y ago
Unfortunately, one doesn't need to own or even be driving a car to still be injured or killed by one. There are many aspects of cave diving that one can influence (checking and servicing equipment, having redundancies) to be safer, as well as many thing about driving and cars that one can't influence (who else is driving around you, the state of mind of who's driving the car/bus you're in) I think the real difference is not necessarily how safe or dangerous one or the other is, but one is a risk that is practically necessary to function in society while the other is not.
lamontcg 10y ago
There's an awful lot of stupid behavior death in cave diving as well. A lot of the risks are mitigated by proper gear and training, just like driving. Don't dive too deep on air to avoid nitrogen narcosis (similar to don't drink and drive). Dive with a buddy. Dive with team and individual redundancy. Do not silt out the cave (the way you kick and your proficiency in the water has a lot to do with this). Always have a continuous guideline to the surface. Reserve at least 1/3 of your gas for emergencies. And in practice there's other rules -- like you should always sight-see or use cameras/videos on the way into the cave. On the exit you should be more efficient (effectively this usually means you use 1/3rd of your gas to enter, and only 1/4 of your gas to exit, which means you have a higher buffer should anything go wrong). The redundancy figures quoted are also low. I've done around 200 cave dives. I've had one hose blow on me in a cave and therefore lost a regulator. I can't think of any other local divers who have had a similar situation where they've actually needed to exit a cave with a failed regulator. I would say the failure rate is most likely closer to 1 in 1000. But even taking 1 in 200 as the failure rate, the chances of three failures are 1 in 8,000,000 and even then you can buddy breathe off of a single remaining regulator and you should still have gas supply to exit (the remaining third is there for that kind of situation). And now I'm more careful to not only get my regulator serviced but to be more aware of changing out hoses and to do so before cave trips if there's signs of wear. Generally with cave fatalities there are blatant issues, such as failure to maintain a continuous guideline leading to navigation errors leading to simply running out of gas because nobody was paying any attention. There's only one known cave diving fatality where all the rules were followed and diver still died, which was the cave diving fatality that killed Parker Turner.

arcticfox 10y ago

So, for the amount of miles I drive per year (10,000), I could go on a single dive for the same risk. Good to know, I guess?