The link you gave puts car deaths above swimming in the second diagram. It doesn’t say that the sporting numbers are measured by session. (Except for the BASE jumping, hang-gliding, scuba diving, canoeing, or rock climbing). My own research (the first three links from Googling “risk of car accident death”) puts car accidents consistently higher than swimming deaths.
I believe that’s because people drive much more than they swim, and the risk communication scale uses, say, your second numbers, and the comparison the link author gave converted that from annual to per-act.
I was trying to show that the swimming estimate wasn’t per session. 1 in 56,587 is close enough to 1 in 83,534 that they’re probably measuring the same thing, namely yearly deaths, in which case (assuming most swimmers swim more than 20 times a year, which I think is reasonable), the per-session risk for driving is more than that for swimming.
You’re right, it’s not per session—but it isn’t per year either. On closer examination it looks like they’re calculating the risk of death over the ten years surveyed (unless the 31 deaths reported are annualized, which I don’t think they are), which is an absolutely terrible bottom line—but fine, it makes the annual risk of death 1 in 566,000. I also notice that the population estimate is identical to that for running and cycling, so it’s probably some sort of very crude estimate of Germans involved in sports. Ugh. At least the climbing stats look more reliable.
Incidentally, an annual risk of death of 1 in 566,000 and a hundred sessions per year (two a week with time off for good behavior) gives us a per-act risk of 0.017 micromorts, about equal to driving four miles in a car.
It’s definitely not the chance of death in a year of swimming. My link already gives us all the numbers we need to calculate that—the number of deaths overall, the number of years being examined, and an estimate of the population involved—and it comes out to a chance of 1 in 5,658. (1,754,182 people / (31 deaths / 10 years).)
This conveniently lets us infer how they’re probably calculating the risk—it looks like they’re assuming one hundred sessions per year (or about two a week; fair enough) and doing a per-session estimate based on that. I also notice that the population estimate is identical to that for cycling and running, so it’s probably some sort of estimate of the number of people in Germany involved in an arbitrary popular sport. Cruder than I’d like, but I was only shooting for an estimate good to within an order of magnitude.
assuming most swimmers swim more than 20 times a year, which I think is reasonable
Those numbers look like general population numbers (and since it looks like a lot of drowning deaths are due to ineptitude, it seems unclear to me whether the yearly risk for frequent swimmers is higher or lower than for non-frequent swimmers). Instead of ‘all drowning,’ the 1 in 83,534 number, one should probably use the ‘in swimming pool’ number, which is 1 in 452,738.
The link you gave puts car deaths above swimming in the second diagram. It doesn’t say that the sporting numbers are measured by session. (Except for the BASE jumping, hang-gliding, scuba diving, canoeing, or rock climbing). My own research (the first three links from Googling “risk of car accident death”) puts car accidents consistently higher than swimming deaths.
http://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html: 1-in-100 lifetime car death , 1-in-8,942 swimming death.
http://www.riskcomm.com/visualaids/riskscale/datasources.php: 1 in 17,625 one year car occupant death rate (based on 2002 data), 1 in 83,534 one year drowning death overall, 1 in 452,738 one year drowning death in swimming pool
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/how-scared-should-we-be/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0: 1 in 84 lifetime car deaths, 1 in 1,134 swimming deaths.
I believe that’s because people drive much more than they swim, and the risk communication scale uses, say, your second numbers, and the comparison the link author gave converted that from annual to per-act.
I was trying to show that the swimming estimate wasn’t per session. 1 in 56,587 is close enough to 1 in 83,534 that they’re probably measuring the same thing, namely yearly deaths, in which case (assuming most swimmers swim more than 20 times a year, which I think is reasonable), the per-session risk for driving is more than that for swimming.
You’re right, it’s not per session—but it isn’t per year either. On closer examination it looks like they’re calculating the risk of death over the ten years surveyed (unless the 31 deaths reported are annualized, which I don’t think they are), which is an absolutely terrible bottom line—but fine, it makes the annual risk of death 1 in 566,000. I also notice that the population estimate is identical to that for running and cycling, so it’s probably some sort of very crude estimate of Germans involved in sports. Ugh. At least the climbing stats look more reliable.
Incidentally, an annual risk of death of 1 in 566,000 and a hundred sessions per year (two a week with time off for good behavior) gives us a per-act risk of 0.017 micromorts, about equal to driving four miles in a car.
It’s definitely not the chance of death in a year of swimming. My link already gives us all the numbers we need to calculate that—the number of deaths overall, the number of years being examined, and an estimate of the population involved—and it comes out to a chance of 1 in 5,658. (1,754,182 people / (31 deaths / 10 years).)
This conveniently lets us infer how they’re probably calculating the risk—it looks like they’re assuming one hundred sessions per year (or about two a week; fair enough) and doing a per-session estimate based on that. I also notice that the population estimate is identical to that for cycling and running, so it’s probably some sort of estimate of the number of people in Germany involved in an arbitrary popular sport. Cruder than I’d like, but I was only shooting for an estimate good to within an order of magnitude.
Those numbers look like general population numbers (and since it looks like a lot of drowning deaths are due to ineptitude, it seems unclear to me whether the yearly risk for frequent swimmers is higher or lower than for non-frequent swimmers). Instead of ‘all drowning,’ the 1 in 83,534 number, one should probably use the ‘in swimming pool’ number, which is 1 in 452,738.