An analysis of deaths in U.S. national parks | Hacker News Reader

An analysis of deaths in U.S. national parks

psbr.law

16 pointsZigurd9 comments

Looks like North Cascades' huge lead (in deaths per visitor) is sort of a statistical anomaly due to having pretty low total visits and no buffer of a large number of safe casual visitors. Searching around, can't find any other details on deaths except this article https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/man-found-sobbing-...

But North Cascades is an overlooked national park and I recommend a visit if you get the chance. It doesn't help that Mt Rainier and Olympic are also close to Seattle.

Ok - so it's worth remembering that this was created[1] by a "content marketing agency" on behalf of a law firm.

AKA, this is an ad.

That said, the North Cascades data is wild, suggesting that you're 6x more likely to die on a visit to that National Park than any other.

It is a rugged and remote landscape, but 6x more dangerous makes me suspect the accuracy of the underlying data.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/12/02/tra...

I’m guessing it’s a combination of extremely small sample size and the North Cascades being disproportionately used for dangerous activities like rock climbing and mountaineering.

True that it is on a site promoting a law firm. But, I don't see a reason to doubt this is an aggregation and visualization of Park Service data. I have some gripes about per capita deaths in some visualization and absolute numbers in others, etc. I do not see tendentiousness, though. There is no "See! They are negligent!" here.

One of the most interesting ads I've come across!

I assume that North Cascades is influenced by the fact that it's not visited a huge amount but that there are a fair number of non-trivial peaks in the park that people climb. A bit surprising it's such an outlier but presumably the intersection of accessibility and challenging. There are probably other examples that are not national parks.

It is some of the most spectacular terrain I've seen in the world. But you have to put in some work to get to it.

8 deaths due to "Wildlife/Animal" vs 17 deaths due to "Homicide." In other words, you're twice as likely to be killed by your own species as another. But that pales in comparison to other categories such as "Natural Death" (285), "Motor Vehicle Crash" (475), and Drowning (668).

Related ongoing thread:

‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34309977 - Jan 2023 (284 comments)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com