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Comment by sk5t | Hacker News Reader

This seems to me like a really simple-minded article--who is surprised that the most available, legal, inexpensive, socially-acceptable drug has the largest impact? By this measure walking down a flight of stairs is more dangerous than mountain climbing.

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Are stairs more dangerous? No. Is the sum of all accidents on the stairs more costly to society than all accidents mountain-climbing? Probably.

There's a reason the occasional mandatory workplace-safety education sessions you have around your office focus on things like ladders and picking up packages: people actually do those things.

Postscript: Also, auto accidents cause kill more people in the US than terrorism. :P

That was sk5t's point.

Funny you should mention workplace safety.. where I work there is a campaign to have people take the stairs instead of the elevators, a typically busybody approach to improving employee fitness. However an employee is far more likely sustain an injury by using the stairs compared to riding in an elevator, and particularly as they were encouraged by the employer to do so, they would have a pretty clear worker's compensation claim.

> However an employee is far more likely sustain an injury by using the stairs compared to riding in an elevator, and particularly as they were encouraged by the employer to do so, they would have a pretty clear worker's compensation claim.

With or without encouragement by their employer, they would have a pretty clear worker's comp claim, as the injury is "in the course of employment."

Also, I would imagine that the company promoting usage of stairs has had an actuary do the cost-benefit analysis of the potential health-care savings versus the potential worker's-comp payouts.

We have a similar campaign where I work. I think the suggestion was instigated more by an "incentive" from our health insurance company than any strong desire by my employer.

Forget stairs, at one job my safety training included training on how to walk safely. And, while it felt silly, they were right to give it some thought (given that it was a repair job likely to involve being at unfamiliar places).

Indeed. If everyone were using shrooms like they drink beer, highway driving would be an adventure.

Doing this sort of analysis "right" (trying to determine which drugs are least-bad, quantitatively) would be a daunting challenge.

People have at least tried, however: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Rat...

Ive never thought about it like that, thanks.

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