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Comment by Kaze404 | Hacker News Reader

Yet another reason for me to avoid private transportation like the plague. As if humans driving 1 ton death machines wasn't bad enough, we've decided to add experimental technology into the mix.

Nope. I'm sticking to trains whenever possible, thank you very much.

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They're usually 2 tons now.

OTOH, most of us will die from a heart attack or cancer. So to the extent that I can control risk factors, driving a car is fairly low on the list. Especially given the degradation of lifestyle I would suffer if I tried hard to avoid it.

That's totally understandable. I certainly don't think driving a car is a moral failure or anything. I just personally try to avoid it as much as I can because, from my perspective, it's not worth it for me or the other people involved. Ideally I would live in a world where nobody needs cars to live comfortably, but for now all I can do is optimize for myself and organize to make it happen for my grand children.

But what if the bus/train stops unexpectedly and another drives into it? It happens. Mechanical failures happen. Human error happens. Accidents happen.

I think if we compare deaths / passenger miles driven between cars and trains. Trains come out very favorably. Possibly only beaten by airplanes.

Edit: Numbers

In the US

> Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 9 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 1,606 times higher than for scheduled airlines

That sounded rather high for trains (dunno what the US is doing wrong), so I checked some other country.

In the UK:

> Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per billion passenger kilometers was over 5 times higher than for buses, 1100 times higher than for scheduled airliners, and an infinity higher than for passenger trains (no deaths were reported).

Deaths/billion passenger-km Car 1.1 Van 0.4 Water 0.4 Bus or coach 0.2 Air 0.01 Rail* 0

In general of the already almost negligible death rate, it seems that rail deaths are mostly people at rail crossings, and maintenance personnel, not passengers.

How about when you compare a Tesla in driver assist mode per-mile with a human driver per-mile?

Given that Tesla drops you out of assist mode as soon as it encounters a confusing situation, that's a tricky question.

Not really a fair comparison unless we can somehow only count non-autopilot accidents that happen in places where autopilot actually works.

Human error does happen, but it results in death an order of magnitude less frequently in buses, trains and airplanes than in private vehicles.

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

Nice for you that that’s an option.

Indeed. I'm fighting for a world where it's an option for everyone.

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