Things that were more likely to kill you in 1970s Britain than today
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Too bad they didn't express the data as a rate every time like say traffic deaths. UK population grew from about 50m to 65m, or 30%. Even if all the absolute data showed flat graphs, as an individual you'd still be substantially better off.
This invites other questions: are we driving safer, or just doing it less. There's data for that too, surely. A quick peek seems to show total traffic in 2012 was 10x that of 1949, and that average miles per person at least grew until the 1990s [0].
In short, these graphs probably severely understate improvements to traffic safety in general, and reductions in danger from traffic to each individual in the UK.
[0] https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/trans...
That sounded really wrong but it turns out you're correct (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#History), I had no idea roundabouts were such a recent thing. Something I've taken for granted as always existing were actually quite rare not long before I was born.
It would be more interesting to know what's more likely to kill you today than in the 70s. Violent crime, terrorism, adventure sports?
[1] https://mises.org/blog/gun-control-fails-what-happened-engla...
[2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/com...
The number of people killed in 2015 used to be normal.
> Child mortality in rich countries today is much lower than 1%. This is a very recent development and was only reached after a hundredfold decline in child mortality in these countries. In early-modern times, child mortality was very high; in 18th century Sweden every third child died, and in 19th century Germany every second child died. With declining poverty and increasing knowledge and service in the health sector, child mortality around the world is declining very rapidly: Global child mortality fell from 18.2% in 1960 to 4.3% in 2015; while 4.3% is still too high, this is a substantial achievement.
Half of all kids in Germany died, less than two centuries ago!
2. In the developing world, it's 0.4%, in the US it's higher at 0.7%. There's some debate over whether that's due to differences in definition, or crap health system and huge inequality. Given the bad health outcomes in the US generally (eg life expectancy), I lean towards the latter hypothesis.
EDIT to add sources, and typos:
This post is about the UK, which I would consider to be part of the "developed" world.
I assume it's not counting stillborns, otherwise where can you possibly draw the line?
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm
http://mentalfloss.com/article/50513/historical-horror-child...
Why? It's easy to lower the number of road fatalities to zero: ban cars. But I think most people would consider that too high a price to pay.
If you have to seriously ask why it's bad to have people dying on the road, it might be better to ask that question in a more private setting.
It's neither new nor shocking for people to express the opinion that the slowest death is not the best one.
I sometimes experience discomfort in response to something as innocuous as minimizing road deaths - it makes me wonder if humans are becoming paperclip maximizers even before AGI is here.
Sure, if you're 80 and facing down a life sentence in a nursing home, do whatever you feel is best. But if you're actively arguing that random people dying in car accidents is a good thing... you know car crashes kill children too, right? They kill good people too, right? They kill smart people. They kill anyone, by pure random luck. They kill your mom, they kill your spouse, they kill your child.
If someone wants to die, sure, let them die. If someone wants to live, I think it's best to minimize the ways they could unintentionally die. But by all means, if you want to stop wearing a seatbelt, you go right ahead. I'm going to buckle mine anyway. And I'm going to try to avoid smallpox, because I am not absolutely insane and I don't have some crazy death fetish.
No one is saying that. The point is that it might be a worthwhile tradeoff to accept some deaths as the price of the benefits that accrue from engaging in certain risky activities.
I wear my seatbelt, but I also have a motorcycle license. I have a modern car with all the latest safety features, but I also have an old car without airbags or ABS. I think phrasing like "crazy death fetish" is unreasonable and histrionic.
Protecting people from harm is something that can be seen as horrifying when taken to the extreme.
OP values human life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
The death rates in the US are higher than in the UK, but this is a different thing than not having improved road safety.
The middle of nowhere roads in the UK are arguably worse than those in the US.
Drowning is down from 600 deaths per year to 400. Road fatalities down from 7000-8000 to 2000
So it's clear that cars and trucks are still a bigger threat than rip tides and lakes ever were.
And then we get to fatalities at work presented in "deaths per 100 000 workers" which at "2" is small compared to the lung cancer mortality rates - around 40-80 on (I think) the same scale.
But you can't directly compare all of the items discussed.
Example, wouldn't this be a better headline for this specific article:
Things more likely to kill you in 70s UK than today: Winter, Workplace, Infancy, Roads, Drowning, Heart Disease, Smog, and Lung Cancer.
Then you decide whether you'll click through. My guess is it would no longer make it to the front page.
the content is aimed at a UK audience, and there's no ads if you're in the UK
You're arguing against a strawman. The post you're replying to didn't say anything about removing the supporting work.
Incidentally, I don't think posting to point out logical fallacies is all that useful. Feels great, adds nothing.
I think it's time for 3000 word headlines to come into fashion.