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>having more than 250 ducks transport more than a million passengers That wasn't the number for DUKWs that was the number for all amphibious passenger vehicles

>having more than 250 ducks transport more than a million passengers That wasn't the number for DUKWs that was the number for all amphibious passenger vehicles. >It's reasonable to assume that that number has been increasing over time That's really a reasonable assumption considering the vehicles are 70+ years old. >but the millions in the 90s at least gives you a decent ballpark Again that's all amphibious vehicles, nothing about DUKWs, but let's assume they are. 1 million passengers. The DUKW in Missouri had 30 passengers, so let's assume the average trip is half full. 1 million passengers / 15 ~= 67k trips * 1.5 hours per trip ~= 100k hours per year. There have about 40 fatalities caused by DUKWs in the last 20 years. 100k hours * 20 years = 2 million hours. 20 deaths per million hours operated For cars we have ~0.625 deaths per million hours operated. 32 times more deadly per hour. Remarkably close to my first estimate. Your #1 link estimates that there are 300 operational DUKWs in the US today. That's going to include reserves that are only operating during busy seasons/weekends etc... But let's assume they are all active for 6 hours per day on average (which is way too high). You still get a fatality rate per hour about 5 times higher than cars. And again, tour boats and tour buses are much safer than cars, so the comparison will be much worse. >And the NTSB also did not find the boats themselves unsafe They did. Here is their recommendation: “Without delay, alter your amphibious passenger vessels to provide reserve buoyancy through passive means, such as watertight compartmentalization, builtin flotation, or equivalent measures, so that they will remain afloat and upright in the event of flooding, even when carrying a full complement of passengers and crew.” “The Safety Board considers that the major consideration in assessing the ability of passengers to escape from a sinking DUKW is the overhead canopy.” >The other issues, which the media is obsessing on today, were listed as contributing to the magnitude of the incident, not causes of the incident. Of course they aren't the cause. A canopy isn't going to cause a boat to sink.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
These vehicles have been operating since 1946. That's 72 years, not 20. The reason I gave you the hours and population is because you then figure out 'person hours' without having to make any assumptions other than average rate of travel to go from deaths/mile to deaths/hour - which I expect is a stat you can actually probably also find out. This was the NTSB's conclusion on the accident. "The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the flooding and sinking of the DUKW No.1 was a missing access plug, which, in turn, was caused by inadequate supervision of company personnel and inadequate management oversight of amphibious passenger vehicle maintenance. Contributing to the sinking was a flaw in the design of DUKWs, that is, the lack of adequate reserve buoyancy that would have allowed the vehicle to remain afloat in a flooded condition." The accident was not caused because the vehicles were unsafe. It was caused because of human error. The things you're talking about are factors that contributed to the sinking. Without the main problem (human error) there would be no problem. And, lo and behold, human error was also the cause in this most recent incident as well.
- learc83 8y ago
  >These vehicles have been operating since 1946. That's 72 years, not 20 I only have fatalities for the last 20 years if that wasn't clear. If you want to go back into non-digitized local newspaper archives across the country to find out if there were any other deaths as well as try to figure out how many were operating 70 years ago, be my guest. That doesn't change that fact that over the last 20 years, DUKWs are much deadlier per hour than cars, and it's even worse when compared to buses and tour boats. >The reason I gave you the hours and population is because you then figure out 'person hours' Fine. 1.5 million person hours * 20 years = 30 million person hours 40 deaths / 30 million person hours = ~1.3 deaths per million person hours The best answer I can find for how long the Average America spends in a car per day times number of drivers times days give me 199,685 million person hours per year, and 37k vehicle fatalities last year = 37k/199685 = 0.19 deaths per million person hours About 6 times deadlier. Tour boats and buses are much safer than cars so adjust accordingly. In the UK (only place I could find the data in hours) water transportation has 50 deaths per billion hours. 0.05 deaths per million person hours, Making DUKWs 26 times deadlier than the average UK passenger boat. >The accident was not caused because the vehicles were unsafe. It was caused because of human error. The things you're talking about are factors that contributed to the sinking. Without the main problem (human error) there would be no problem. This is completely meaningless. Human error is the cause of almost all traffic accidents as well, yet some cars are still unsafe because of the behavior of the car once human error takes place. Assume that the NTSB finds that a defect in a new bus called the Explodo will trap all it's occupants inside and cause it to catch fire in the event the driver hits an obstacle at greater than 20 miles per hour. Are you going to argue that the NTSB isn't really saying the bus is unsafe because human error is necessary to trigger the defect? No you're not. Look, I get it. You pride yourself on making evidence based judgments. However, in this case you did some quick math and misjudged the danger, but now you're digging in and sticking to an indefensible position. You're letting your emotions influence your position--behaving exactly like the journalists you were original railing against.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    The LA Times hit piece on this issue went so far as to dig up random traffic incidents involving these vehicles. If there were significant fatal accidents before 1999 - especially if the fault lay with the vehicles' design, they would have dug them up. So it's safe to assume there were none. Your numbers on person hours for us drivers is far off. Keep in mind that a total of about 3.2 trillion miles are driven per year. 199.685 trillion person hours would give an average base rate of travel of 0.016 miles per hour. Obviously you need to multiply that by the average number of occupants per vehicle, but even if you say there are 10 occupants you're looking at 0.16 miles per hour on average so it looks like you missed some decimal points. Your explodo example is not really reasonable. We know here for a fact that these things have transported tens of millions of people. And they've also been in operation for millions of hours. There's way more than enough of a sample for lots of things to have gone wrong. Yet of all the incidents that have happened in these millions of hours, and the likely 40,000,000+ people that have used these vehicles, we only had 2 severe accidents - both caused by extreme human incompetence. So you're left with two choices, neither of which I expect you'd really like: - Accidents practically never happen. - Accidents do happen at a normal frequency, but in nearly all cases the outcome is completely safe.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

These vehicles have been operating since 1946. That's 72 years, not 20. The reason I gave you the hours and population is because you then figure out 'person hours' without having to make any assumptions other than average rate of travel to go from deaths/mile to deaths/hour - which I expect is a stat you can actually probably also find out. This was the NTSB's conclusion on the accident. "The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the flooding and sinking of the DUKW No.1 was a missing access plug, which, in turn, was caused by inadequate supervision of company personnel and inadequate management oversight of amphibious passenger vehicle maintenance. Contributing to the sinking was a flaw in the design of DUKWs, that is, the lack of adequate reserve buoyancy that would have allowed the vehicle to remain afloat in a flooded condition." The accident was not caused because the vehicles were unsafe. It was caused because of human error. The things you're talking about are factors that contributed to the sinking. Without the main problem (human error) there would be no problem. And, lo and behold, human error was also the cause in this most recent incident as well.

learc83 8y ago
>These vehicles have been operating since 1946. That's 72 years, not 20 I only have fatalities for the last 20 years if that wasn't clear. If you want to go back into non-digitized local newspaper archives across the country to find out if there were any other deaths as well as try to figure out how many were operating 70 years ago, be my guest. That doesn't change that fact that over the last 20 years, DUKWs are much deadlier per hour than cars, and it's even worse when compared to buses and tour boats. >The reason I gave you the hours and population is because you then figure out 'person hours' Fine. 1.5 million person hours * 20 years = 30 million person hours 40 deaths / 30 million person hours = ~1.3 deaths per million person hours The best answer I can find for how long the Average America spends in a car per day times number of drivers times days give me 199,685 million person hours per year, and 37k vehicle fatalities last year = 37k/199685 = 0.19 deaths per million person hours About 6 times deadlier. Tour boats and buses are much safer than cars so adjust accordingly. In the UK (only place I could find the data in hours) water transportation has 50 deaths per billion hours. 0.05 deaths per million person hours, Making DUKWs 26 times deadlier than the average UK passenger boat. >The accident was not caused because the vehicles were unsafe. It was caused because of human error. The things you're talking about are factors that contributed to the sinking. Without the main problem (human error) there would be no problem. This is completely meaningless. Human error is the cause of almost all traffic accidents as well, yet some cars are still unsafe because of the behavior of the car once human error takes place. Assume that the NTSB finds that a defect in a new bus called the Explodo will trap all it's occupants inside and cause it to catch fire in the event the driver hits an obstacle at greater than 20 miles per hour. Are you going to argue that the NTSB isn't really saying the bus is unsafe because human error is necessary to trigger the defect? No you're not. Look, I get it. You pride yourself on making evidence based judgments. However, in this case you did some quick math and misjudged the danger, but now you're digging in and sticking to an indefensible position. You're letting your emotions influence your position--behaving exactly like the journalists you were original railing against.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  The LA Times hit piece on this issue went so far as to dig up random traffic incidents involving these vehicles. If there were significant fatal accidents before 1999 - especially if the fault lay with the vehicles' design, they would have dug them up. So it's safe to assume there were none. Your numbers on person hours for us drivers is far off. Keep in mind that a total of about 3.2 trillion miles are driven per year. 199.685 trillion person hours would give an average base rate of travel of 0.016 miles per hour. Obviously you need to multiply that by the average number of occupants per vehicle, but even if you say there are 10 occupants you're looking at 0.16 miles per hour on average so it looks like you missed some decimal points. Your explodo example is not really reasonable. We know here for a fact that these things have transported tens of millions of people. And they've also been in operation for millions of hours. There's way more than enough of a sample for lots of things to have gone wrong. Yet of all the incidents that have happened in these millions of hours, and the likely 40,000,000+ people that have used these vehicles, we only had 2 severe accidents - both caused by extreme human incompetence. So you're left with two choices, neither of which I expect you'd really like: - Accidents practically never happen. - Accidents do happen at a normal frequency, but in nearly all cases the outcome is completely safe.