You should probably reduce your estimate of the risk by some factor to account for the fact that you will be in a car a lot less than the average American. 1 minute of Googling suggests that it’s ~300 hours per year for the average American, though I’m sure there are lots of problems with that number (e.g. I think that is the number for typical drivers, rather than typical Americans).
I didn’t quite phrase it like this, but I’m thinking that ultimately the question is about whether driving is worth it per unit of time. So even if I drive less often, the question is still “Is it worth it for me to drive these 20 miles?”. Also, I meant for the question to be more general, not necessarily whether I personally should or should not drive.
Sure, but then shouldn’t you be dividing by distance / time traveled by the average American per year to get risk per mile / hour of driving?
Like, take your $25,000/year estimate, divide by 300 hours for a typical American, and you get ~$80 per hour of driving, which might start to look more worth it. (Again, I recommend finding a better version of the “300” number.)
(Another plausibly important correction would be the proportion of driving that happens at high speed vs. low speed.)
Hm, the reason I went with cost per year is that it felt like it would be easier to think about that way. Eg. $1000/year vs $3.33/hr, but now that I’m thinking about it again that actually doesn’t seem to be the case. At all. Good point.
You should probably reduce your estimate of the risk by some factor to account for the fact that you will be in a car a lot less than the average American. 1 minute of Googling suggests that it’s ~300 hours per year for the average American, though I’m sure there are lots of problems with that number (e.g. I think that is the number for typical drivers, rather than typical Americans).
I didn’t quite phrase it like this, but I’m thinking that ultimately the question is about whether driving is worth it per unit of time. So even if I drive less often, the question is still “Is it worth it for me to drive these 20 miles?”. Also, I meant for the question to be more general, not necessarily whether I personally should or should not drive.
Sure, but then shouldn’t you be dividing by distance / time traveled by the average American per year to get risk per mile / hour of driving?
Like, take your $25,000/year estimate, divide by 300 hours for a typical American, and you get ~$80 per hour of driving, which might start to look more worth it. (Again, I recommend finding a better version of the “300” number.)
(Another plausibly important correction would be the proportion of driving that happens at high speed vs. low speed.)
Hm, the reason I went with cost per year is that it felt like it would be easier to think about that way. Eg. $1000/year vs $3.33/hr, but now that I’m thinking about it again that actually doesn’t seem to be the case. At all. Good point.