[markjenn]

You'd be a fool not to look at things like this.

Because the vertical axis on this graph is on a per distance traveled basis rather than a per trip or per hour basis, it penalizes walking and bicycling a lot because these activities travel much shorter distances. For example, these statistics say you're 3x more likely to get killed riding a motorcycle across the US rather than a bicycle, but since the bicycle would take 250 hours rather than 50 hours, the bicycle on an hourly exposure basis is actually much safer than these statistics imply. Even more so with walking which looks unduly hazardous on a distance traveled basis. But who walks across the US or does a 60 mile round-trip commute walking? If you did this commute, you'd spend 18 hours a day walking to/from work vs. 1.5 hours driving and you can certainly see how this level of exposure could tilt the odds towards a walking accident.

OTOH, these are average statistics which include a lot of Harley riders riding drunk with no helmets. My guess (that's all it is) is that you can reduce your risk exposure in motorcycling by a factor of 2x or 3x by following a few simple rules: wear a good helmet, don't ride after drinking, don't ride in groups who like to compare penis size, don't ride quickly in traffic, avoid riding at night or in the rain, etc. Do all these things and your motorcycling risk is probably 10x a car vs. the 40x that these statistics say. Of course, you can also do these same things to reduce your risk in the car so, relatively speaking, the car risk is potentially always going to be a small fraction of the motorcycle risk.

And I bet the flying risk is "scheduled commercial service". Fly your own plane and you're back to the left of this chart. (As an aside, I think the ridiculous money we spend on further reducing the minuscule levels of flying risk is stupid. But no politician is going to get elected on the platform of making commercial air travel less safe.)

- Mark