xkcd #2940: Modes of Transportation
Title Text:
My bold criticism might anger the hot air balloon people, which would be a real concern if any of them lived along a very narrow line directly upwind of me.
alt-text:
A chart that categorizes various modes of transportation based on their practicality and danger level:
Zone of Practicality:
- Trains
- Airliners
- Boats
- Walking
- Cars
- Scooters
- Bicycles
Zone of Specialty and Recreational Vehicles:
- Motorcycles
- Helicopters
- Light aircraft
- Go karts
- Skateboards
- Rollerblades
- Skis
- Unicycles
- Sleds
- Bumper cars
???:
- Hot air balloons
“Hot air balloons are the optimal mode of transportation, if your optimization algorithm has a sign error.”
What’s the benefit of measuring per trip versus per passenger mile?
Per trip is more in line with how people think about danger. Like, am I going to die on this trip?
I would think real statistics would be more interesting then peoples emotions when talking about what is actually dangerous.
And the question is am I going to die on this trip? And there the real statistics are pretty clear, cars are safer.
I sort of answered this somewhere else but i will reiterate.
Using this metric you are sort of assuming all trips are equal. No matter how short, or long you are assuming the base danger is the same. This means that driving 100 meters is just as dangerous as driving for a whole day. (See what the problem is?)
And if we look at this premise in isolation: “Am i going to die on this trip”? If the trip is 100m, then a plane is probably out of the question either way. And if the trip is to a different country… then hey, look at that, the sources you cited come into relevance (where pr distance a plane is safer) and you would have to calculate the danger of completing that specific trip in a car VS flying that distance with a plane.
You are generalizing on terms that make no sense, since “total number of trips” in cars include all manner of different scenarios of some times extremely varying degree of danger. So in order to have data that is statistically relevant and in any form comparable you have to choose a different metric.
So to answer the question again “Am i going to die on this trip?” or to extrapolate “should i drive or fly on this trip”, if you cant use generic statistics, the answer will be “it depends. You have to calculate danger for the trip specifically”.