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Would you say there's a difference in kind between the risk of death due to equipment failure or negligence, versus the risk of another human being actively trying to kill you? They seem different to me, but I'm not sure how to reason about the difference.

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Death-by-person probably less controllable than death-by-equipment-failure. But, in reality, I'm not sure that it is. There are processes/procedures to reduce the likelihood of both.

This is exactly what I'm struggling with. Intuitively, the idea of another person trying to injure me sounds scarier than a harness failing or tree falling. People can be a lot more unpredictable than gravity or metal fatigue. But then again, the safety of loggers and roofers depends not only on their own gear & diligence, but also on human co-workers who can be just as unpredictable. Versus violent criminals, at least the co-workers aren't actively and creatively malicious (usually).

The actual homicide rate of cops is almost half of the normal population.

Interesting. Do you have a link? Those numbers are hard to Google, all the results I'm getting are for deaths caused by the police vs. of police themselves.

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