Hacker News Reader

No definitely not, when we are talking about “Switching your commute from a car to a bike or public transit will extend your lifespan”.

If bike vs car choice is confounded by route safety, deaths per distance or time does not tell you anything useful about whether switching will make you safer.

It's of cause worth noting in comparing cars to bicycles that cars are the number one cause of bicyclist and pedestrian fatalities, so fewer cars will lead to fever cyclist dying.

Railways and busses are a lot closer to airplanes in statistics then cars https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... so going car less is probably the single biggest improvement we can make to transportation safety.

The issue with that table is that it's comparing apples to oranges. It compares general travel to the most dangerous part of a dangerous activity, like the final push for the summit of mount Everest. It compares activities that take a few minutes and are done for fun to activities that take hours every day and people to do get to work. It's not like I'm going to hang-glide to work.