I’m curious what would changes you would make, based on the information? The things that affect driving risk are generally well known and Josh took a stab at quantifying them; what would you do differently if you found certain numbers were off by 20%?
Not strictly what you asked for but you might be interested in Dan Luu’s write-up on car safety, which bears on my answer to the above question: safer cars cost more money, and a 20% increase in risk ups the amount I’m willing to pay for more safety. I could also see it being useful for weather conditions, which weren’t an issue considered in the original report.
UPDATE: I made a guestimate and it turns out that if you’re already a basically safe driver, the difference between the safest car and a decent car has to be really stupidly safe to affect your risk of death much. The safety number is made up right now, I have a request out to Dan for his estimate of the safety increase but otherwise am not planning on pursuing it, since it makes so little difference to my life.
UPDATE2: Dan says that among late model cars, the difference in safety is pretty negligible (but late model matters a lot)
I’m curious what would changes you would make, based on the information? The things that affect driving risk are generally well known and Josh took a stab at quantifying them; what would you do differently if you found certain numbers were off by 20%?
In general I don’t care too much about being off by 20%. There are some caveats/comments though.
There are a lot of variables, and it feels too me like if each of them could be off by ~20%, the overall calculation could be off by, idk, a factor of 1-2? That matters somewhat to me, but still not too too much. I’m more interested in orders of magnitude differences, or at least factors of more like 3-5.
I value life a lot more highly than others. And with a higher value on life, differences like 20% start to matter more. Still not too much, and if I’m being honest they probably still aren’t the types of differences that would actually change my behavior.
I suppose the things that affect driving risks are well known, but are their magnitudes well known? I have two rationalist friends in particular I’m thinking of who believe/suspect that being a safe driver can have orders of magnitude differences. On the other hand, I don’t share that impression, and it looks like you along with Josh Jacobson don’t either. But none of us have spent much time investigating this question, so I’d think our confidences are all relatively low. Another example is driving speed. I did a quick investigation and it seems like the sort of thing that could have orders of magnitude impact. If so, that could actually be pretty influential for me, making local trips at low speed limits something I’m ok with. And maybe there are other big impact things we are overlooking that would show up in a closer investigation. That’s part of the value I see in a “microcovid for cars/other things”: knowing that others have investigated it thoroughly, I can feel comfortable that we’re not missing anything important.
Not strictly what you asked for but you might be interested in Dan Luu’s write-up on car safety
I am interested in the question of how much the car you’re in affects your risk of death, but I’m not really getting that from his article.
UPDATE: I made a guestimate and it turns out that if you’re already a basically safe driver, the difference between the safest car and a decent car has to be really stupidly safe to affect your risk of death much. The safety number is made up right now, I have a request out to Dan for his estimate of the safety increase but otherwise am not planning on pursuing it, since it makes so little difference to my life.
If you use the typical $10M valuation for life, then a micromort costs $10. You arrived at 40 micromorts/year, so $400/year. If your ballpark of the safety of a car affecting mortality by a factor of 1 is accurate, and if you own a car for, say, 5 years, then you might save something like $400/year * 5 years = $2,000 by choosing a safer car, but this probably isn’t worth the investment of time or money. If you 10x the value you place on life it starts to matter though. I don’t get this impression, but it’s also possible that the safety of the car affects mortality by a factor of 5-10 instead of 0.5-2.
I’m curious what would changes you would make, based on the information? The things that affect driving risk are generally well known and Josh took a stab at quantifying them; what would you do differently if you found certain numbers were off by 20%?
Not strictly what you asked for but you might be interested in Dan Luu’s write-up on car safety, which bears on my answer to the above question: safer cars cost more money, and a 20% increase in risk ups the amount I’m willing to pay for more safety. I could also see it being useful for weather conditions, which weren’t an issue considered in the original report.
UPDATE: I made a guestimate and it turns out that if you’re already a basically safe driver, the difference between the safest car and a decent car has to be really stupidly safe to affect your risk of death much. The safety number is made up right now, I have a request out to Dan for his estimate of the safety increase but otherwise am not planning on pursuing it, since it makes so little difference to my life.
UPDATE2: Dan says that among late model cars, the difference in safety is pretty negligible (but late model matters a lot)
In general I don’t care too much about being off by 20%. There are some caveats/comments though.
There are a lot of variables, and it feels too me like if each of them could be off by ~20%, the overall calculation could be off by, idk, a factor of 1-2? That matters somewhat to me, but still not too too much. I’m more interested in orders of magnitude differences, or at least factors of more like 3-5.
I value life a lot more highly than others. And with a higher value on life, differences like 20% start to matter more. Still not too much, and if I’m being honest they probably still aren’t the types of differences that would actually change my behavior.
I suppose the things that affect driving risks are well known, but are their magnitudes well known? I have two rationalist friends in particular I’m thinking of who believe/suspect that being a safe driver can have orders of magnitude differences. On the other hand, I don’t share that impression, and it looks like you along with Josh Jacobson don’t either. But none of us have spent much time investigating this question, so I’d think our confidences are all relatively low. Another example is driving speed. I did a quick investigation and it seems like the sort of thing that could have orders of magnitude impact. If so, that could actually be pretty influential for me, making local trips at low speed limits something I’m ok with. And maybe there are other big impact things we are overlooking that would show up in a closer investigation. That’s part of the value I see in a “microcovid for cars/other things”: knowing that others have investigated it thoroughly, I can feel comfortable that we’re not missing anything important.
I am interested in the question of how much the car you’re in affects your risk of death, but I’m not really getting that from his article.
If you use the typical $10M valuation for life, then a micromort costs $10. You arrived at 40 micromorts/year, so $400/year. If your ballpark of the safety of a car affecting mortality by a factor of 1 is accurate, and if you own a car for, say, 5 years, then you might save something like
$400/year * 5 years = $2,000by choosing a safer car, but this probably isn’t worth the investment of time or money. If you 10x the value you place on life it starts to matter though. I don’t get this impression, but it’s also possible that the safety of the car affects mortality by a factor of 5-10 instead of 0.5-2.