8 ms·

Things that were more likely to kill you in 1970s Britain than today

58 points by sambeau 9y ago

everdev 9y ago
Not to much surprising or interesting. Healthy and safety have improved and deaths have dropped correspondingly. It would be more interesting to know what's more likely to kill you today than in the 70s. Violent crime, terrorism, adventure sports?
- ascorbic 9y ago
  Certainly not terrorism. The 70s were the height of the Troubles.
- eikenberry 9y ago
  Assuming their numbers are anything like the US, then definitely not violent crime. It has declined significantly since the 70s. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
- rflrob 9y ago
  I can’t find any super up-to-date info on the UK murder rate, but extrapolating trends from the early 2010s, it seems to be about the same as the 70s [1]. Deaths by Terrorism in the UK are way down [2], though if you care whether the people likely to kill you are Irish or Islamist, I suppose that’s you’re prerogative. No idea where to find data on adventure sports... [1] https://mises.org/blog/gun-control-fails-what-happened-england-ireland-and-canada https://mises.org/blog/gun-control-fails-what-happened-engla... [2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/750eak/terrorism_deaths_by_year_in_the_uk/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/com...
  - jwilk 9y ago
    Non-AMP link for [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/750eak/terrorism_deaths_by_year_in_the_uk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/750eak/terroris...
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Re: terrorism, it's a trend over the whole Western Europe: http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2016-07/we-terrorism-1970-2015final.png http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2016-07/we-terro... The number of people killed in 2015 used to be normal.
    - jwilk 9y ago
      The two graphs merged: https://i.imgur.com/hzQ8NgW.png https://i.imgur.com/hzQ8NgW.png
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  Diseases of old age that people get more because they didn't die young from the causes in the article presumably.
  - loeg 9y ago
    Dementia, cancer.
- janekm 9y ago
  Walking down stairs while looking at phone screens has overtaken walking down stairs reading broadsheets (I only partially jest, stairs do feature very highly in actuary tables: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/790609.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/790609.stm , more than 1000 per year in the U.K.).
aaaqqqq 9y ago
Is boredom on the list?
fwdpropaganda 9y ago
At some point we have to start demanding the whole information in the headline. Example, wouldn't this be a better headline for this specific article: Things more likely to kill you in 70s UK than today: Winter, Workplace, Infancy, Roads, Drowning, Heart Disease, Smog, and Lung Cancer. Then you decide whether you'll click through. My guess is it would no longer make it to the front page.
- vuln 9y ago
  Is all about the click rate mate. Sensational titles = ad revenue. They purposely shorten it to make you more interested.
  - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    I understand that, that's why I'm saying that for list-type articles, HN should make it a rule that you have to put everything on the headline.
  - blibble 9y ago
    it really isn't given it is the BBC the content is aimed at a UK audience, and there's no ads if you're in the UK
- hackbinary 9y ago
  I like what you're saying, but now generally scan through the comments first to see if the original article is worth reading. Is this meta reading? It is all about the meta ...
- mrkurt 9y ago
  No that wouldn't be a better headline. Doing that to everything sounds awful. Decent articles are much more valuable than tweet sized factoids, if you reduce them to facts without context you end up in a really bad place. Statements of fact with no supporting work are powerfully scary.
  - rlpb 9y ago
Waterluvian 9y ago
1% chance of your child dying before age 1 is kind of terrifying to me.
- lisper 9y ago
  A century ago the infant mortality rate in the U.S. was 10%. 1% is incredibly low by historical standards. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm http://mentalfloss.com/article/50513/historical-horror-childbirth http://mentalfloss.com/article/50513/historical-horror-child...
- jstanley 9y ago
  It's still 0.4% today, which is approximately equally terrifying!
  - georgeecollins 9y ago
    Not if you round to the nearest percent.
  - FabHK 9y ago
    1. You all know though that historically, it was much much worse? From (the excellent) ourworldindata.org, my highlights: > Child mortality in rich countries today is much lower than 1%. This is a very recent development and was only reached after a hundredfold decline in child mortality in these countries. In early-modern times, child mortality was very high; in 18th century Sweden every third child died, and in 19th century Germany every second child died. With declining poverty and increasing knowledge and service in the health sector, child mortality around the world is declining very rapidly: Global child mortality fell from 18.2% in 1960 to 4.3% in 2015; while 4.3% is still too high, this is a substantial achievement. Half of all kids in Germany died, less than two centuries ago! 2. In the developing world, it's 0.4%, in the US it's higher at 0.7%. There's some debate over whether that's due to differences in definition, or crap health system and huge inequality. Given the bad health outcomes in the US generally (eg life expectancy), I lean towards the latter hypothesis. EDIT to add sources, and typos: https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT
SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago
Unfortunately these aren't consistently presented in a way that makes them comparable. Drowning is down from 600 deaths per year to 400. Road fatalities down from 7000-8000 to 2000 So it's clear that cars and trucks are still a bigger threat than rip tides and lakes ever were. And then we get to fatalities at work presented in "deaths per 100 000 workers" which at "2" is small compared to the lung cancer mortality rates - around 40-80 on (I think) the same scale. But you can't directly compare all of the items discussed.
mc32 9y ago
Great progress on road related fatalities and smoking. While any number of road fatalities is too many, that decrease is despite increased usage --something we in the US have not been able to replicate, but this shows if you take road safety seriously, it can be improved [now, I have no idea if they initially had a relatively high number to start with]
- lisper 9y ago
  > any number of road fatalities is too many Why? It's easy to lower the number of road fatalities to zero: ban cars. But I think most people would consider that too high a price to pay.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    I think that was the entire point of the rest of the post that followed. Basically, it'd be nice to have zero, but just having fewer deaths is an improvement. If you have to seriously ask why it's bad to have people dying on the road, it might be better to ask that question in a more private setting.
    - lisper 9y ago
      I didn't say road deaths weren't bad. Yes, all else being equal it would be better not to have people dying on roads (or anywhere else). But all else is not equal. Everything is a trade-off, and we have to choose where on the balance we want to be. I don't think it's beneficial to sweep this fact under a platitude.
    - perl4ever 9y ago
      It's not pleasant dying in a nursing home because of (or after) a stroke, or from cancer, or... It's neither new nor shocking for people to express the opinion that the slowest death is not the best one. I sometimes experience discomfort in response to something as innocuous as minimizing road deaths - it makes me wonder if humans are becoming paperclip maximizers even before AGI is here. See: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
IkmoIkmo 9y ago
Nice article. https://ourworldindata.org https://ourworldindata.org is quite good as well, often indicating we've made massive improvements despite populist thought that we're living in bad times, nostalgia for the past, a la make xyz great again. Too bad they didn't express the data as a rate every time like say traffic deaths. UK population grew from about 50m to 65m, or 30%. Even if all the absolute data showed flat graphs, as an individual you'd still be substantially better off. This invites other questions: are we driving safer, or just doing it less. There's data for that too, surely. A quick peek seems to show total traffic in 2012 was 10x that of 1949, and that average miles per person at least grew until the 1990s [0]. In short, these graphs probably severely understate improvements to traffic safety in general, and reductions in danger from traffic to each individual in the UK. [0] https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/transport/POST-briefing-on-peak-car.pdf https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/trans...
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Once the UK discovered roundabouts the number of traffic fatalities dropped steeply. Also, present day vehicles are much safer than 1970's vehicles. The mini and the metro (1980) were about as unsafe as it gets.
  - flukus 9y ago
    > Once the UK discovered roundabouts the number of traffic fatalities dropped steeply That sounded really wrong but it turns out you're correct (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#History), I had no idea roundabouts were such a recent thing. Something I've taken for granted as always existing were actually quite rare not long before I was born.

58 points by sambeau 9y ago

Not to much surprising or interesting. Healthy and safety have improved and deaths have dropped correspondingly. It would be more interesting to know what's more likely to kill you today than in the 70s. Violent crime, terrorism, adventure sports?

ascorbic 9y ago
Certainly not terrorism. The 70s were the height of the Troubles.
eikenberry 9y ago
Assuming their numbers are anything like the US, then definitely not violent crime. It has declined significantly since the 70s. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
rflrob 9y ago
I can’t find any super up-to-date info on the UK murder rate, but extrapolating trends from the early 2010s, it seems to be about the same as the 70s [1]. Deaths by Terrorism in the UK are way down [2], though if you care whether the people likely to kill you are Irish or Islamist, I suppose that’s you’re prerogative. No idea where to find data on adventure sports... [1] https://mises.org/blog/gun-control-fails-what-happened-england-ireland-and-canada https://mises.org/blog/gun-control-fails-what-happened-engla... [2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/750eak/terrorism_deaths_by_year_in_the_uk/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/com...
- jwilk 9y ago
  Non-AMP link for [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/750eak/terrorism_deaths_by_year_in_the_uk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/750eak/terroris...
- icebraining 9y ago
  Re: terrorism, it's a trend over the whole Western Europe: http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2016-07/we-terrorism-1970-2015final.png http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2016-07/we-terro... The number of people killed in 2015 used to be normal.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    The two graphs merged: https://i.imgur.com/hzQ8NgW.png https://i.imgur.com/hzQ8NgW.png
ZeroGravitas 9y ago
Diseases of old age that people get more because they didn't die young from the causes in the article presumably.
- loeg 9y ago
  Dementia, cancer.
janekm 9y ago
Walking down stairs while looking at phone screens has overtaken walking down stairs reading broadsheets (I only partially jest, stairs do feature very highly in actuary tables: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/790609.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/790609.stm , more than 1000 per year in the U.K.).

aaaqqqq 9y ago

Is boredom on the list?

fwdpropaganda 9y ago

At some point we have to start demanding the whole information in the headline. Example, wouldn't this be a better headline for this specific article: Things more likely to kill you in 70s UK than today: Winter, Workplace, Infancy, Roads, Drowning, Heart Disease, Smog, and Lung Cancer. Then you decide whether you'll click through. My guess is it would no longer make it to the front page.

vuln 9y ago
Is all about the click rate mate. Sensational titles = ad revenue. They purposely shorten it to make you more interested.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  I understand that, that's why I'm saying that for list-type articles, HN should make it a rule that you have to put everything on the headline.
- blibble 9y ago
  it really isn't given it is the BBC the content is aimed at a UK audience, and there's no ads if you're in the UK
hackbinary 9y ago
I like what you're saying, but now generally scan through the comments first to see if the original article is worth reading. Is this meta reading? It is all about the meta ...
mrkurt 9y ago
No that wouldn't be a better headline. Doing that to everything sounds awful. Decent articles are much more valuable than tweet sized factoids, if you reduce them to facts without context you end up in a really bad place. Statements of fact with no supporting work are powerfully scary.
- rlpb 9y ago

Waterluvian 9y ago

1% chance of your child dying before age 1 is kind of terrifying to me.

lisper 9y ago
A century ago the infant mortality rate in the U.S. was 10%. 1% is incredibly low by historical standards. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm http://mentalfloss.com/article/50513/historical-horror-childbirth http://mentalfloss.com/article/50513/historical-horror-child...
jstanley 9y ago
It's still 0.4% today, which is approximately equally terrifying!
- georgeecollins 9y ago
  Not if you round to the nearest percent.
- FabHK 9y ago
  1. You all know though that historically, it was much much worse? From (the excellent) ourworldindata.org, my highlights: > Child mortality in rich countries today is much lower than 1%. This is a very recent development and was only reached after a hundredfold decline in child mortality in these countries. In early-modern times, child mortality was very high; in 18th century Sweden every third child died, and in 19th century Germany every second child died. With declining poverty and increasing knowledge and service in the health sector, child mortality around the world is declining very rapidly: Global child mortality fell from 18.2% in 1960 to 4.3% in 2015; while 4.3% is still too high, this is a substantial achievement. Half of all kids in Germany died, less than two centuries ago! 2. In the developing world, it's 0.4%, in the US it's higher at 0.7%. There's some debate over whether that's due to differences in definition, or crap health system and huge inequality. Given the bad health outcomes in the US generally (eg life expectancy), I lean towards the latter hypothesis. EDIT to add sources, and typos: https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT

SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago

Unfortunately these aren't consistently presented in a way that makes them comparable. Drowning is down from 600 deaths per year to 400. Road fatalities down from 7000-8000 to 2000 So it's clear that cars and trucks are still a bigger threat than rip tides and lakes ever were. And then we get to fatalities at work presented in "deaths per 100 000 workers" which at "2" is small compared to the lung cancer mortality rates - around 40-80 on (I think) the same scale. But you can't directly compare all of the items discussed.

mc32 9y ago

Great progress on road related fatalities and smoking. While any number of road fatalities is too many, that decrease is despite increased usage --something we in the US have not been able to replicate, but this shows if you take road safety seriously, it can be improved [now, I have no idea if they initially had a relatively high number to start with]

lisper 9y ago
> any number of road fatalities is too many Why? It's easy to lower the number of road fatalities to zero: ban cars. But I think most people would consider that too high a price to pay.
- freehunter 9y ago
  I think that was the entire point of the rest of the post that followed. Basically, it'd be nice to have zero, but just having fewer deaths is an improvement. If you have to seriously ask why it's bad to have people dying on the road, it might be better to ask that question in a more private setting.
  - lisper 9y ago
    I didn't say road deaths weren't bad. Yes, all else being equal it would be better not to have people dying on roads (or anywhere else). But all else is not equal. Everything is a trade-off, and we have to choose where on the balance we want to be. I don't think it's beneficial to sweep this fact under a platitude.
  - perl4ever 9y ago
    It's not pleasant dying in a nursing home because of (or after) a stroke, or from cancer, or... It's neither new nor shocking for people to express the opinion that the slowest death is not the best one. I sometimes experience discomfort in response to something as innocuous as minimizing road deaths - it makes me wonder if humans are becoming paperclip maximizers even before AGI is here. See: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

IkmoIkmo 9y ago

Nice article. https://ourworldindata.org https://ourworldindata.org is quite good as well, often indicating we've made massive improvements despite populist thought that we're living in bad times, nostalgia for the past, a la make xyz great again. Too bad they didn't express the data as a rate every time like say traffic deaths. UK population grew from about 50m to 65m, or 30%. Even if all the absolute data showed flat graphs, as an individual you'd still be substantially better off. This invites other questions: are we driving safer, or just doing it less. There's data for that too, surely. A quick peek seems to show total traffic in 2012 was 10x that of 1949, and that average miles per person at least grew until the 1990s [0]. In short, these graphs probably severely understate improvements to traffic safety in general, and reductions in danger from traffic to each individual in the UK. [0] https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/transport/POST-briefing-on-peak-car.pdf https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/trans...

jacquesm 9y ago
Once the UK discovered roundabouts the number of traffic fatalities dropped steeply. Also, present day vehicles are much safer than 1970's vehicles. The mini and the metro (1980) were about as unsafe as it gets.
- flukus 9y ago
  > Once the UK discovered roundabouts the number of traffic fatalities dropped steeply That sounded really wrong but it turns out you're correct (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#History), I had no idea roundabouts were such a recent thing. Something I've taken for granted as always existing were actually quite rare not long before I was born.