First result (I have no idea how good those numbers are, I don’t have time to check) when I searched for “fatalities per passenger mile cars” has data for 2007 − 2021. 2008 looks like the year where cars look comparatively least bad it says (deaths per 100,000,000 passenger miles):
0.59 for “Passenger vehicles”, where “Passenger vehicles include passenger cars, light trucks, vans, and SUVs, regardless of wheelbase. Includes taxi passengers. Drivers of light-duty vehicles are considered passengers.”
0.08 for busses,
0.12 for railroad passenger trains,
0 for scheduled airlines.
So even in the best-comparatively looking year there are >7x more deaths per passenger mile for ~cars than for busses.
Again, I am not here to dispute that car-related deaths are an order of magnitude more frequent than bus-related deaths. But the aggregated data includes every sort of dumb drivers doing very risky things (like those taxi drivers not even wearing a seat belt).
Since I’m quite confident to have a particularly cautious driving style, I am not very interested in the total number of fatal car accidents, because lots of people driving recklessly make it skyrocket (I’m not relying entirely on self-judgement here; anecdotally, at least four times I gave a ride to a friend and they mocked me for my overly cautious driving).
I’m now trying to find data on the number of car fatalities not involving people doing stupid things like texting or speeding. I thought that taxi drivers were a good proxy for cautious drivers, but I was very wrong and now I don’t know what else to use as a proxy.
I’ve just had a skim but here’s some of my impressions. I might read it in more detail when I get to work today.
It doesn’t deal with fatalities (just crashes) but having a quick look at Fig 1, drivers who aren’t distracted or impaired are involved in ~28% of crashes. Note that “impairment” also includes things like anger.
Fig 2 is pretty great for you—shows the baseline of each type of impairment, error, distraction and the odds ratio for crashes it’s involved in. Not a statistician but I believe that means you’re 10 times more likely to get into a crash if you’re visibly angry/sad but only 3 times more likely if you’re drowsy. Which is very interesting to know.
And that 51% of drivers are observed to be distracted in some way during normal driving condition (which can include “dancing in seat to music” and “interaction with adult passenger”.
This paper was just the first result in a scholar search for the term “crash causation factors driver”, so this info is relatively easy to find.
I think the thing you’re missing is you’re still exposed to crashes because of some maniac doing something extremely risky and hitting you.
Yes, but this is true even when I’m not driving. An out-of-control car could crash into me even when I’m walking or sitting inside a bus (and in some cases even when I’m at home).
An out-of-control car could crash into me even when I’m walking or sitting inside a bus.
Indeed this is a perfectly ordinary occurrence. I know at least one person who drives regularly, and has been driving for many years; she’s been involved in exactly one serious car accident, ever—which involved a car hitting her while she was walking.
Thanks for pointing that out. I took a brake in the middle of reading the post and didn’t realize that.
Again, I am not here to dispute that car-related deaths are an order of magnitude more frequent than bus-related deaths. But the aggregated data includes every sort of dumb drivers doing very risky things (like those taxi drivers not even wearing a seat belt).
Sure. I’m not sure what you wanted to discuss. I guess I didn’t make it clear what I want to discuss either.
What you’re talking about (estimate of the risk you’re causing) sounds like you’re interested in how you decide to move around. Which is fine. My intuition was that the (expected) cost of life lost as your personal driving is not significant but after plugging in some numbers I might have been wrong
We’re talking 0.59 deaths per 100′000′000 miles.
If we value life at 20′000′000 (I’ve heard some analyses use 10 M$, if we value QUALY at 100k$ and use 7% discount rate we get some 14.3M$ for infinite life)
So cost of life lost per mile of driving is 2e7 * 0.59 / 1e8 = 0.708 $ / mile
Average US person drives about 12k miles / year (second search result (1st one didn’t want to open)), estimated cost of car ownership is 12 k$ / year (link from a Youtube video I remember mentioned this stat) so average cost per mile is ~1$ so 70¢ / mile of seems significant. And it might be relevant if your personal effect here is half or 10% of that.
I on the other hand wanted to point out that it makes sense to arrange stuff in such way that people don’t want to drive around too much. (But I didn’t make that clear in my previous comment)
“Passenger mile” is not a stat we use in my jurisdiction (we use VKT, vehicle kilometres travelled), but if I’m interpreting it right, then you need to know the average number of passengers to know the number of crashes the driver is involved in. For example, say that each bus has 10 passengers on average, that would put the fatalities per passenger mile at 0.80, which given this is OOM seems pretty similar to cars.
That said, following that to its conclusion you’d end up with trains having some horrendously high rate of crashing, which doesn’t pass the sniff test. I think I might be having a failure of logic somewhere here.
I wanted to say that it makes sense to arrange stuff so that people don’t need to drive around too much and can instead use something else to get around (and also maybe they have more stuff close by so that they need to travel less). Because even if bus drivers aren’t any better than car drivers using a bus means you have 10x fewer vehicles causing risk for others. And that’s better (assuming people have fixed places to go to so they want to travel ~fixed distance).
First result (I have no idea how good those numbers are, I don’t have time to check) when I searched for “fatalities per passenger mile cars” has data for 2007 − 2021. 2008 looks like the year where cars look comparatively least bad it says (deaths per 100,000,000 passenger miles):
0.59 for “Passenger vehicles”, where “Passenger vehicles include passenger cars, light trucks, vans, and SUVs, regardless of wheelbase. Includes taxi passengers. Drivers of light-duty vehicles are considered passengers.”
0.08 for busses,
0.12 for railroad passenger trains,
0 for scheduled airlines.
So even in the best-comparatively looking year there are >7x more deaths per passenger mile for ~cars than for busses.
This is the same chart linked in the main post.
Again, I am not here to dispute that car-related deaths are an order of magnitude more frequent than bus-related deaths. But the aggregated data includes every sort of dumb drivers doing very risky things (like those taxi drivers not even wearing a seat belt).
Since I’m quite confident to have a particularly cautious driving style, I am not very interested in the total number of fatal car accidents, because lots of people driving recklessly make it skyrocket (I’m not relying entirely on self-judgement here; anecdotally, at least four times I gave a ride to a friend and they mocked me for my overly cautious driving).
To make a comparison, take this document on cancer incidence (chart on page 2). Lung cancer is the most frequent cancer of them all, so you should be more worried about lung cancer than every other cancer, right? Wrong, unless you smoke, since people who have never smoked only make up 10-20% of all lung cancer cases (it follows that you should be 5x less worried about lung cancer if you aren’t a smoker, I presume).
I’m now trying to find data on the number of car fatalities not involving people doing stupid things like texting or speeding. I thought that taxi drivers were a good proxy for cautious drivers, but I was very wrong and now I don’t know what else to use as a proxy.
I think the thing you’re missing is you’re still exposed to crashes because of some maniac doing something extremely risky and hitting you.
I’m also a very cautious driver (as you can imagine in my line of work), but I do make mistakes all the time.
This paper seems like it might be interesting for you to read: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.1513271113
I’ve just had a skim but here’s some of my impressions. I might read it in more detail when I get to work today.
It doesn’t deal with fatalities (just crashes) but having a quick look at Fig 1, drivers who aren’t distracted or impaired are involved in ~28% of crashes. Note that “impairment” also includes things like anger.
Fig 2 is pretty great for you—shows the baseline of each type of impairment, error, distraction and the odds ratio for crashes it’s involved in. Not a statistician but I believe that means you’re 10 times more likely to get into a crash if you’re visibly angry/sad but only 3 times more likely if you’re drowsy. Which is very interesting to know.
And that 51% of drivers are observed to be distracted in some way during normal driving condition (which can include “dancing in seat to music” and “interaction with adult passenger”.
This paper was just the first result in a scholar search for the term “crash causation factors driver”, so this info is relatively easy to find.
Yes, but this is true even when I’m not driving. An out-of-control car could crash into me even when I’m walking or sitting inside a bus (and in some cases even when I’m at home).
Anyway, thanks, I’ll look into this paper.
Indeed this is a perfectly ordinary occurrence. I know at least one person who drives regularly, and has been driving for many years; she’s been involved in exactly one serious car accident, ever—which involved a car hitting her while she was walking.
Sorry about slow reply, stuff came up.
Thanks for pointing that out. I took a brake in the middle of reading the post and didn’t realize that.
Sure. I’m not sure what you wanted to discuss. I guess I didn’t make it clear what I want to discuss either.
What you’re talking about (estimate of the risk you’re causing) sounds like you’re interested in how you decide to move around. Which is fine. My intuition was that the (expected) cost of life lost as your personal driving is not significant but after plugging in some numbers I might have been wrong
We’re talking 0.59 deaths per 100′000′000 miles.
If we value life at 20′000′000 (I’ve heard some analyses use 10 M$, if we value QUALY at 100k$ and use 7% discount rate we get some 14.3M$ for infinite life)
So cost of life lost per mile of driving is 2e7 * 0.59 / 1e8 = 0.708 $ / mile
Average US person drives about 12k miles / year (second search result (1st one didn’t want to open)), estimated cost of car ownership is 12 k$ / year (link from a Youtube video I remember mentioned this stat) so average cost per mile is ~1$ so 70¢ / mile of seems significant. And it might be relevant if your personal effect here is half or 10% of that.
I on the other hand wanted to point out that it makes sense to arrange stuff in such way that people don’t want to drive around too much. (But I didn’t make that clear in my previous comment)
You choose this post to read and comment on while driving!?
(joking)
“Passenger mile” is not a stat we use in my jurisdiction (we use VKT, vehicle kilometres travelled), but if I’m interpreting it right, then you need to know the average number of passengers to know the number of crashes the driver is involved in. For example, say that each bus has 10 passengers on average, that would put the fatalities per passenger mile at 0.80, which given this is OOM seems pretty similar to cars.
That said, following that to its conclusion you’d end up with trains having some horrendously high rate of crashing, which doesn’t pass the sniff test. I think I might be having a failure of logic somewhere here.
I wanted to say that it makes sense to arrange stuff so that people don’t need to drive around too much and can instead use something else to get around (and also maybe they have more stuff close by so that they need to travel less). Because even if bus drivers aren’t any better than car drivers using a bus means you have 10x fewer vehicles causing risk for others. And that’s better (assuming people have fixed places to go to so they want to travel ~fixed distance).