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Comment by tedchs | Hacker News Reader

Well, people had to be careful before the automobile too, you know. People could by killed by horses or wagons. The introduction of the automobile didn't make it suddenly unsafe to be in the street.

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A collision with a horse and wagon might break your leg, but it's highly unlikely to kill you. That's one of the main points of "Vision Zero" that I linked. Any collision at speeds less than 20mph has a very low fatality risk.

This (https://www.quora.com/Were-carriage-accidents-more-or-less-c...) had some links and summarizes them as motor vehicles causing 40% more fatalities (in 2014) than horse carriages in 1907-1911. That's in the same ballpark, anyway.

You can argue the specifics, but it seems modern recreational horseback riding is fairly dangerous. http://freakonomics.com/2006/08/28/whoa-nellie/

In that freakonimics article it mentions that Matthew Broderick killed a mother and daughter by dangerous driving [0]: http://www.nndb.com/people/785/000022719/

Horses had a habit of not trampling people if they could avoid it, regardless of the driver’s own intent. They were in many ways like self driving cars.

These things (safety) aren’t binary. Just because it wasn’t absolutely false before doesn’t mean it was much more true after.

Horses are evil creatures that will stop your head in. The difference between now and then is we dont have an agency that keeps track of horse related deaths then.

I grew up around a lot of horses and this was not my experience. But then those horses were all geldings and mares; stallions have a reputation for being mean bastards but I don't know if that's true or an urban legend.

The key difference is speed. One of the earliest speeding laws considered was the automobile cannot go faster than a horse and wagon which is about 10-15 mph. It is much easier to stop in time, or get out of the way, when at 15 mph rather than 30 mph.

Horses and wagons are loud. As were the earliest cars.

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