Sure, there’s a lot of variance involved. But there are more and less safe driving habits, too, and I’ll bet the variance is about as high. The point isn’t to demonstrate that one practice is under all conditions more or less safe than another, it’s to compare their average dangers as they’re actually practiced. And that clearly favors driving. It’s a profoundly bad idea to look at a set of statistics like this and say “oh, the ones that look inconvenient to me were probably doing something unsafe, they don’t count”.
On the other hand, these statistics don’t take health benefits from being physically active into account, which could potentially give ammunition for a much stronger critique—though given ike’s comments, I’m not sure it’d be a valid critique in the context of Jewish law.
But there are more and less safe driving habits, too, and I’ll bet the variance is about as high.
I bet less. Yes, you can practice defensive driving, but if you’re on the road in the traffic there is only so much you can do to avoid the idiot who is both in a hurry and needs to send that text message right now. You don’t have much control over external factors. But in swimming you often do—it’s pretty hard to drown if you are swimming in a pool with others watching.
it’s to compare their average dangers as they’re actually practiced
Yes. Therefore if you know you practice in way that’s different from the average, the probabilities change for you.
Yes, you can practice defensive driving, but if you’re on the road in the traffic there is only so much you can do to avoid the idiot who is both in a hurry and needs to send that text message right now.
I wasn’t thinking about defensive driving, I was thinking of driving thirty miles over the limit while not wearing a seat belt and texting your girlfriend about the awesome fight you just saw in the pub.
In pretty much any activity you can asymptotically drive your chance of surviving towards zero if you set your mind to it :-/
If we are talking about variance, the lower safety bound is often in approximately the same place, but the upper safety bound (as well as the center of the distribution) varies.
Yes, but if you’re going climbing you can choose to go the climbing gym and be absolutely safe from the avalanches in the Himalayas. However if you’re going driving on public roads, you cannot make yourself absolutely safe from drunk drivers.
You can make your climbing safer than you can make you driving.
That’s what makes climbing higher variance than driving.
You can make your climbing safer than you can make you driving.
You can make your climbing safer than summiting K2 would be, certainly. But enough safer to overcome those one and a half orders of magnitude of difference in the average? I haven’t actually seen any numbers on this, but that seems optimistic to me.
I’ll have to look at the methodology to believe that one and a half orders of magnitude, but regardless of that yes, you can make your climbing safer.
For example, you can do bouldering on technical routes which are all about agility and finger/arm strength. These routes rarely go more than 10 feet above thick mats—since you’re not belayed, you’re expected to just jump down when/if you run into trouble. Twist you ankle, sure, possible. Die—not very likely.
Sure, there’s a lot of variance involved. But there are more and less safe driving habits, too, and I’ll bet the variance is about as high. The point isn’t to demonstrate that one practice is under all conditions more or less safe than another, it’s to compare their average dangers as they’re actually practiced. And that clearly favors driving. It’s a profoundly bad idea to look at a set of statistics like this and say “oh, the ones that look inconvenient to me were probably doing something unsafe, they don’t count”.
On the other hand, these statistics don’t take health benefits from being physically active into account, which could potentially give ammunition for a much stronger critique—though given ike’s comments, I’m not sure it’d be a valid critique in the context of Jewish law.
I bet less. Yes, you can practice defensive driving, but if you’re on the road in the traffic there is only so much you can do to avoid the idiot who is both in a hurry and needs to send that text message right now. You don’t have much control over external factors. But in swimming you often do—it’s pretty hard to drown if you are swimming in a pool with others watching.
Yes. Therefore if you know you practice in way that’s different from the average, the probabilities change for you.
I wasn’t thinking about defensive driving, I was thinking of driving thirty miles over the limit while not wearing a seat belt and texting your girlfriend about the awesome fight you just saw in the pub.
In pretty much any activity you can asymptotically drive your chance of surviving towards zero if you set your mind to it :-/
If we are talking about variance, the lower safety bound is often in approximately the same place, but the upper safety bound (as well as the center of the distribution) varies.
I’ll bet there are more idiot drunks on the road than there are Himalayan mountaineers, even proportionally.
Yes, but if you’re going climbing you can choose to go the climbing gym and be absolutely safe from the avalanches in the Himalayas. However if you’re going driving on public roads, you cannot make yourself absolutely safe from drunk drivers.
You can make your climbing safer than you can make you driving.
That’s what makes climbing higher variance than driving.
You can make your climbing safer than summiting K2 would be, certainly. But enough safer to overcome those one and a half orders of magnitude of difference in the average? I haven’t actually seen any numbers on this, but that seems optimistic to me.
I’ll have to look at the methodology to believe that one and a half orders of magnitude, but regardless of that yes, you can make your climbing safer.
For example, you can do bouldering on technical routes which are all about agility and finger/arm strength. These routes rarely go more than 10 feet above thick mats—since you’re not belayed, you’re expected to just jump down when/if you run into trouble. Twist you ankle, sure, possible. Die—not very likely.
Yes, I mentioned bouldering in my original post.