Micromort
en.wikipedia.org
Micromort
1–10 of 102 posts
Re: Micromort
#2The idea of scaling probabilities (by 10^6) misses the point. Log scales are better at revealing orders of magnitude! How about dbMorts instead?
Re: Micromort
#3A lot of this seems weird. If I imbibe 0.5 liters of wine exactly once in my life I doubt there's any effect. Same for 2 cigarettes. For a lot of things there are thresholds that must be crossed before any effect is created.
Re: Micromort
#4So per mile jets are only ~4 times safer than cars? That's a little unsettling.
Re: Micromort
#5The Wikipedia article claims air pollution from living in New York or Boston is 30 times worse than the risk from living with a smoker, though that was in 1979. Presumably air pollution has become much less severe since then. Does anyone know the figure today?
Re: Micromort
#6Holy crap. I live in NYC, where I walk everywhere, drink, and fly several times per year. Apparently I'm screwed.
Re: Micromort
#7A lot of this seems weird. If I imbibe 0.5 liters of wine exactly once in my life I doubt there's any effect. Same for 2 cigarettes. For a lot of things there are thresholds that must be crossed before any effect is created.
Some of these fall into the old correlation-causation trap. People who wear leather jackets are more likely to get into motorcycle accidents, but putting on a jacket alone doesn't change your likelihood of an accident.
There's also contexts missing from many of the other statistics: where you drive and the kind of car affects the mortality rate of driving, for instance.
The micromort is still a useful concept in specific controlled conditions (radiation exposure), or as a first approximation of quantifying risk, but the general statistics should definitely be taken with many grains of salt.
Re: Micromort
#8Holy crap. I live in NYC, where I walk everywhere, drink, and fly several times per year. Apparently I'm screwed.
As long as you aren't taking canoes!
Re: Micromort
#9So per mile jets are only ~4 times safer than cars? That's a little unsettling.
That stat shocked me too, and from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Statistics, it appears to be false. However, that table isn't sourced very well either.
Looking at the source, he seems to be lumping shorter plane rides in with the long-distance (safer) ones. The danger is largely in takeoff and landing, as far as I understand. I also can't tell if the source takes into account private jets, which are less regulated and likely more risky than passenger jets. I'd also imagine the statistic varies a lot of you limit yourself to flights involving the US and our colonies[1].
Or the source could just be wrong - he could have mistakenly used the chance of being involved in a crash, rather than the chance of dying. That would put it in the right order or magnitude, I think.
[1] With all the "evil empire" rhetoric flying around lately...
Re: Micromort
#10So per mile jets are only ~4 times safer than cars? That's a little unsettling.
That stat shocked me too, and from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Statistics , it appears to be false. However, that table isn't sourced very well either. Looking at the source, he seems to be lumping shorter plane rides in with the long-distance (safer) ones. The danger is largely in takeoff and landing, as far as I understand. I also can't tell if the source takes into account private jets, which are…
There are no reliable statistics for the safety of commercial air travel in the US these days.
It's not for lack of trying. It's simply that commercial air travel in the US is so safe that there isn't enough data to compile anything like a reasonable risk figure. Prior to the Asiana crash, the last fatal airliner crash in the US was in 2009, and there were no fatalities in 2008 or 2007.
So, yes, they're much safer than that number would imply, but it's hard to say exactly how much.