What are the chances I will die of a motor vehicle crash outside of my lifetime?
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But what about being in an accident after I’m already caput? Hmm? What about then?
I could’ve died in a motor vehicle crash just in the past week! A tire shop broke 2 wheel studs trying to remove the lug nuts, replaced them and SIMULTANEOUSLY TWISTED THE BRAKE LINE REINSTALLING THE BRAKE CALIPER. I didn’t know until I had gotten to the job site after driving AN HOUR (2 hour round trip!) THROUGH WINDING MOUNTAIN ROADS EVERY DAY FOR A WEEK. I got to the job site today (technically yesterday) and the line finally popped. Holy shit.
I’ve been thinking about how many times in the past week the brakes could have totally failed so many times just in the past few hours. If you ever get work done on a vehicle of any kind that could 100% kill you if done something goes wrong please please please double check their work (or have someone you trust do it) and hold them accountable.
I can’t embed images directly from Sync but rest assured I have many pictures of their handiwork and will be doing something about it
Edit: I’d like to specify that this is in a heavily loaded work truck and not a car. If I had lost brakes going down the mountain not only would I have had no way to stop, I would’ve been going so much faster than a car.
Dude that’s serious as fuck, wow. How did your wind up stopping, parking brake? I’ve been worried about this ever since parking brakes became electric vs the older cable types.
Luckily I had just made it into the driveway before they completely failed so I was able to put it into park. But yeah, the parking brake is cable operated luckily! I had a new brake line brought to me and I replaced it in the driveway and brought the brakes back to life.
Here’s a picture of what it looked like before I replaced it
A midsized college football stadium might hold about 70,000 people. Imagine going onto the loudspeaker and announcing “Seven hundred and fifty-three of the people here today are going to die in a car crash. Enjoy the game”
This is a statistical fact that has basically no bearing on most individuals.
Risk of death in a motor vehicle crash is affected by a ton of factors, most of them within your control.
For example I live in a walkable city and I pay attention at crosswalks. When I drive, it’s mostly daytime highway driving in a well-maintained vehicle with the driver (me) not impaired. All this alone reduces my risk by orders of magnitude.
At the same time there are people who are out there drunk driving on 2-lane roads and highways every weekend.
Same thing with riding motorcycles. I hear so often “don’t you know how dangerous it is?! Look at the statistics!” And yeah, it is objectively dangerous but by wearing proper gear and not being a complete idiot you can remove yourself from most of the statistics. Motorcycles attract a disproportionately thrill-seeking population, which makes motorcycles as a whole seem more dangerous than they are. If the people on bikes who are running red lights and doing 120 on the interstate didn’t have motorcycles they’d be running red lights and doing 120 on the interstate in cars and dying that way instead.
Most of my close calls were my fault. Other drivers, though, scare the hell out me. Maneuvering around motorcycles isn’t too common so you end up being a snag in someone’s driving habit.
I wonder what are the odds for someone over 30 who has driving experience and training?
I ask because for motorcycles the first and second year riders make up most of the deaths
Which is still lower than the chance that you’ll commit suicide. Or just simply die from a fall…or just from catching COVID.
So yeah. Pretty safe.
Since you brought it up, let’s dive into the numbers as presented[1]. The top all-cause is heat disease. A disease that’s preventable by moderate exercise (e.g. walking, biking, playing baseball, anything really) and avoiding common legal drugs (tobacco and alcohol being most implicated, but also most available).
Next up, cancer. Also a general class of disease that has many causes, but has also been shown that moderate exercise reduces cancer risk.
COVID and respiratory disease? Preventive measures like vaccines and, again, moderate exercise also reduce this risk. Oh, and cars are a factor in this category (long-term inhaling tailpipe emissions will make your lungs unhealthy).
Opioid overdose (1:55)? Suicide (1:87)? That’s somewhat self explanatory to fix, but good medical care and moderate exercise again helps.
Guns? That’s all cases of guns. Homicide (1:219) and suicide (1:159) by guns must be rolled up to get to the 1:89 figure. Homicide is a big issue to untangle, like suicide. That said, homicide has been linked to car infrastructure depressing local economies and as a tool in segregating black communities into unfit areas away from economically viable white ones.
Then we’re finally down to falls (1:92) and cars (1:93).
What can we take away from this? If you’re trying to reduce risk, go for a walk or ride a bike regularly. It’ll help you avoid heart disease, improve odds against respiratory diseases, and is a good tool for upping your mental health game. No need to trust me. I’m a dog with a keyboard. Talk to your doctor about it. You may be surprised how effective reducing drinking, stopping smoking, and going out for a walk every day can do.
Whoops, my bad. Pedestrian “incidents” (ran over by car) is the next cause (1:468). Cycling isn’t too far behind (1:3,162). Maybe we should continue to drive overhead bad parts of town, inhale our neighbor’s car fumes, and enjoy our near-guaranteed death by heart attack and choking.
[1] In the OP’s data source. It’s a good source, but it is US biased and biased in NHTSA’s reporting (e.g. person in hospital from a car, but died >30 days later? That’s natural causes.).
How perfectly normal
