I think this post could do with some estimates of absolute risks.
According to the site you link to, there are 7476 deaths in traffic accidents for people in the 15-24 age range (NB—this presumably includes pedestrians, so is a massive overestimate of the deaths of people who were driving, but I’ll go with it for now).
In total, there were 21,859,806 males in your age group, so your probability of dying in a road traffic accident in any given year is approximately 0.0003. This translates to a risk per day of approximately 0.0000009.
Combining these numbers naively, the risk of being involved in a traffic accident on the first snowy day is approximately 0.0000009*1.14. In other words, your excess risk of dying by driving on the first snowy day is approximately 0.0000001. Even assuming that driving in snow is 10 times more dangerous than driving in normal conditions, this risk is 1 in 1 million. Is it really worth going out of your way to avoid driving on the first snowy day to avoid a 1 in 1 million increased chance of dying?
It is worth noting that as an avid transhumanist, I might well expect Michael to think that a 1 in 1 million increased chance of living as long as the Singularity, or dying in such a way as to allow his head to be frozen is probably worth quite a lot. But by revealed preference, most people in the US are only willing to pay around $10 to avoid a 1 in 1 million chance of dying (cf The Value of Statistcal Life), and so should probably only avoid driving on the first snowy day if they’d be willing to pay less than $10 to avoid the inconvenience.
The other examples could do with a similar analysis. A good way of thinking about it is how many fewer people would you expect to die if 1000 people took your advice.
Another point is that, even for the avid transhumanist, it seems unlikely that avoiding traffic accidents really is the best way of trying to live long enough to reach the Singularity—basically no-one dies before the age of 40 - a much more common cause of death among today’s 15-24 year olds than dying in an RTA is living until you’re 45 and then dying of Coronary Heart Disease, so you should probably look at optimising your lifestyle/diet to avoid that before you worry too much about getting an ipod cable for the car (although, actually, just running some quick numbers in my head, it seems like that one is likely to be a good investment). I note Dymtry has already made a comment along these lines.
Finally, some of the advice from other people that you’ve included in your bullet-pointed list is just terrible. Cycling is around 10 times more dangerous per passenger mile than driving. One anecdote which says that cycling might increase your ability to drive safely cannot possibly outweigh the massive evidence that says cycling is massively more likely to get you killed than driving is. Similarly, I would like to see some evidence that, say, driving safety courses actually help. Someone on the internet said so is not very convincing.
What’s my point?
First—thou shalt not report odds ratios. There is a wealth of literature on the subject which says that people make better decisions when present with absolute risk estimates than with odds ratios.
Second—it always pays to crunch some numbers. Car crashes are the most common cause of death among 15-24 year olds, but it is far from clear that steps taken to avoid car crashes are the best way for 15-24 year olds to extend their lifespan.
Third, [citation needed]. If you are compiling a list of advice like this, I think the onus is on you to make some effort to check that the advice you’re giving is useful, or at least to put a disclaimer saying that you haven’t. This could be useful resource, if it could be trusted.
Cycling does not uniquely reduce risk of coronary heart disease. Even if cycling beats driving because of reduced risk of heart disease, driving + non-dangerous exercise would still beat cycling.
At roughly double the time investment. I prefer to commute by bicycle whenever possible (I live in a city where about 20% of people bike to work during summer and about 5% during the winter, so I suspect risk is lowered by bikes being more common on the road). The commute by bike takes about 80 minutes (including return), sitting in rush-hour traffic takes about the same, as would “non-dangerous” exercise. Discounting the negative effects of commuting by car, I would still be losing about 400 hours per year by “exercising safely”.
So in order to make up for the lost time, the increased risk of commuting by bicycle should reduce my life expectancy by roughly 0.4%. It doesn’t.
Also, statistics and my personal experience indicates that the most effective way of avoiding traffic accidents is to live in a western country other than the United States
Also, statistics and my personal experience indicates that the most effective way of avoiding traffic accidents is to live in a western country other than the United States
That doesn’t correct for urbanization, which could affect the statistics in any number of ways (both positive and negative), so is worthless.
Canada is less urbanized, Western Europe is more urbanized. All have lower deaths than the USA.
Also, why should that correction be necessary? If urbanization leads to lower car deaths, that’s a good reason to move to a more urbanized place. I can’t find any significant number of news stories about subway deaths, and bus travel would count as cars, so there isn’t slack being picked up by other methods of transport.
I didn’t mean to imply that it’s a reason which should override other ones. What I did mean was that
Also, statistics and my personal experience indicates that the most effective way of avoiding traffic accidents is to live in a western country other than the United States
is true even if urbanization is a confounding factor.
Emphasis mine: ”...the most effective way of avoiding traffic accidents” is to change countries. Oh, really?
By the way, the US is a diverse country. Traffic fatalities per 100,000 population: Italy 6.2, Belgium 7.2, Massachusetts 5.3. So, is the most effective way of avoiding traffic accidents is to move to Boston? DC is even better -- 2.4 fatalities per 100,000 population…
Technically true, but the difference is small: about two percent less of the population living in urban areas, which is the usual measure of urbanization. Canada has a smaller population and a larger land area, but most of its land is very sparsely populated. (Several European countries, incidentally, are less urbanized than the US by this measure, including Germany and the UK.)
It does seem to have fewer road fatalities by most reasonable measures, though. It’s closest if the denominator is in distance driven, and even there the US is about 15% higher.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I’ll be updating the post with adjustments people have recommended very soon. However, I am curious about this:
Third, [citation needed]. If you are compiling a list of advice like this, I think the onus is on you to make some effort to check that the advice you’re giving is useful, or at least to put a disclaimer saying that you haven’t. This could be useful resource, if it could be trusted.
Aside from the recommendations from the community (which say merely ′ says X’) I did include links to all of my sources. Am I missing something here?
Aside from the recommendations from the community (which say merely ′ says X’) I did include links to all of my sources. Am I missing something here
No, I guess maybe my criticism was too hasty, sorry. The bits which say “username says X” currently seem to me to be about as prominent in the post as those which are better researched, which is not ideal. When updating, it would probably be a good idea either to check facts on those bits of advice (probably too much effort to be worth it) or to clearly separate them from the other advice.
The bits which say “username says X” currently seem to me to be about as prominent in the post as those which are better researched, which is not ideal.
This is a very good point—I’ve updated the post to account for it.
this presumably includes pedestrians, so is a massive overestimate of the deaths of people who were driving, but I’ll go with it for now
This page claims that pedestrian fatalities represent about 11% of the total fatalities from motor vehicle accidents, so it’s in the same ballpark either way. I wouldn’t call that a particularly authoritative source, but by some back-of-the-envelope math it’s fairly consistent with your numbers.
Thanks for checking. I probably should have bothered to do that myself, after berating Michael’s lack of scholarship. This UK government publication says that 25% of road deaths were pedestrians, and 50% were car drivers, so yes, figures for total casualties are basically the same as figures for car drivers.
I think this post could do with some estimates of absolute risks.
According to the site you link to, there are 7476 deaths in traffic accidents for people in the 15-24 age range (NB—this presumably includes pedestrians, so is a massive overestimate of the deaths of people who were driving, but I’ll go with it for now).
In total, there were 21,859,806 males in your age group, so your probability of dying in a road traffic accident in any given year is approximately 0.0003. This translates to a risk per day of approximately 0.0000009.
Combining these numbers naively, the risk of being involved in a traffic accident on the first snowy day is approximately 0.0000009*1.14. In other words, your excess risk of dying by driving on the first snowy day is approximately 0.0000001. Even assuming that driving in snow is 10 times more dangerous than driving in normal conditions, this risk is 1 in 1 million. Is it really worth going out of your way to avoid driving on the first snowy day to avoid a 1 in 1 million increased chance of dying?
It is worth noting that as an avid transhumanist, I might well expect Michael to think that a 1 in 1 million increased chance of living as long as the Singularity, or dying in such a way as to allow his head to be frozen is probably worth quite a lot. But by revealed preference, most people in the US are only willing to pay around $10 to avoid a 1 in 1 million chance of dying (cf The Value of Statistcal Life), and so should probably only avoid driving on the first snowy day if they’d be willing to pay less than $10 to avoid the inconvenience.
The other examples could do with a similar analysis. A good way of thinking about it is how many fewer people would you expect to die if 1000 people took your advice.
Another point is that, even for the avid transhumanist, it seems unlikely that avoiding traffic accidents really is the best way of trying to live long enough to reach the Singularity—basically no-one dies before the age of 40 - a much more common cause of death among today’s 15-24 year olds than dying in an RTA is living until you’re 45 and then dying of Coronary Heart Disease, so you should probably look at optimising your lifestyle/diet to avoid that before you worry too much about getting an ipod cable for the car (although, actually, just running some quick numbers in my head, it seems like that one is likely to be a good investment). I note Dymtry has already made a comment along these lines.
Finally, some of the advice from other people that you’ve included in your bullet-pointed list is just terrible. Cycling is around 10 times more dangerous per passenger mile than driving. One anecdote which says that cycling might increase your ability to drive safely cannot possibly outweigh the massive evidence that says cycling is massively more likely to get you killed than driving is. Similarly, I would like to see some evidence that, say, driving safety courses actually help. Someone on the internet said so is not very convincing.
What’s my point?
First—thou shalt not report odds ratios. There is a wealth of literature on the subject which says that people make better decisions when present with absolute risk estimates than with odds ratios.
Second—it always pays to crunch some numbers. Car crashes are the most common cause of death among 15-24 year olds, but it is far from clear that steps taken to avoid car crashes are the best way for 15-24 year olds to extend their lifespan.
Third, [citation needed]. If you are compiling a list of advice like this, I think the onus is on you to make some effort to check that the advice you’re giving is useful, or at least to put a disclaimer saying that you haven’t. This could be useful resource, if it could be trusted.
...but might contribute sufficiently to your reduced risk of dying of coronary heart disease at 45 to offset that?
Cycling does not uniquely reduce risk of coronary heart disease. Even if cycling beats driving because of reduced risk of heart disease, driving + non-dangerous exercise would still beat cycling.
At roughly double the time investment. I prefer to commute by bicycle whenever possible (I live in a city where about 20% of people bike to work during summer and about 5% during the winter, so I suspect risk is lowered by bikes being more common on the road). The commute by bike takes about 80 minutes (including return), sitting in rush-hour traffic takes about the same, as would “non-dangerous” exercise. Discounting the negative effects of commuting by car, I would still be losing about 400 hours per year by “exercising safely”.
So in order to make up for the lost time, the increased risk of commuting by bicycle should reduce my life expectancy by roughly 0.4%. It doesn’t.
Also, statistics and my personal experience indicates that the most effective way of avoiding traffic accidents is to live in a western country other than the United States
That doesn’t correct for urbanization, which could affect the statistics in any number of ways (both positive and negative), so is worthless.
Canada is less urbanized, Western Europe is more urbanized. All have lower deaths than the USA.
Also, why should that correction be necessary? If urbanization leads to lower car deaths, that’s a good reason to move to a more urbanized place. I can’t find any significant number of news stories about subway deaths, and bus travel would count as cars, so there isn’t slack being picked up by other methods of transport.
No, it’s not, because you’re ignoring other causes of death and we already know that everything else is not equal.
I didn’t mean to imply that it’s a reason which should override other ones. What I did mean was that
is true even if urbanization is a confounding factor.
Is not.
Emphasis mine: ”...the most effective way of avoiding traffic accidents” is to change countries. Oh, really?
By the way, the US is a diverse country. Traffic fatalities per 100,000 population: Italy 6.2, Belgium 7.2, Massachusetts 5.3. So, is the most effective way of avoiding traffic accidents is to move to Boston? DC is even better -- 2.4 fatalities per 100,000 population…
That’s true.
Technically true, but the difference is small: about two percent less of the population living in urban areas, which is the usual measure of urbanization. Canada has a smaller population and a larger land area, but most of its land is very sparsely populated. (Several European countries, incidentally, are less urbanized than the US by this measure, including Germany and the UK.)
It does seem to have fewer road fatalities by most reasonable measures, though. It’s closest if the denominator is in distance driven, and even there the US is about 15% higher.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I’ll be updating the post with adjustments people have recommended very soon. However, I am curious about this:
Aside from the recommendations from the community (which say merely ′ says X’) I did include links to all of my sources. Am I missing something here?
No, I guess maybe my criticism was too hasty, sorry. The bits which say “username says X” currently seem to me to be about as prominent in the post as those which are better researched, which is not ideal. When updating, it would probably be a good idea either to check facts on those bits of advice (probably too much effort to be worth it) or to clearly separate them from the other advice.
This is a very good point—I’ve updated the post to account for it.
btw, you can delete your other comment after retracting it and reloading the page.
This page claims that pedestrian fatalities represent about 11% of the total fatalities from motor vehicle accidents, so it’s in the same ballpark either way. I wouldn’t call that a particularly authoritative source, but by some back-of-the-envelope math it’s fairly consistent with your numbers.
Thanks for checking. I probably should have bothered to do that myself, after berating Michael’s lack of scholarship. This UK government publication says that 25% of road deaths were pedestrians, and 50% were car drivers, so yes, figures for total casualties are basically the same as figures for car drivers.
(accidental double-post)