Black Friday death count | Hacker News Reader

Black Friday death count

blackfridaydeathcount.com

89 pointscsmuk41 comments

This my site. I would have submitted it here, since I frequent HN way more than Reddit, but I thought /r/WTF was more appropriate.

The real-time pane of Google Analytics has been pretty entertaining: http://33c4d819db899251066f-11ab2606b95aca1e296d8d1ea376f411...

There an RSS feed or any other way to poll the site for updates?

I don't think it's really necessary, since there's only one day a year that I can update it.

Quite a few people have been calling it a 'real time' service, which is a bit silly once you actually think about it.

Touché :) I'll just check it out on Saturday. Fingers crossed no one dies this year.

Actually I saw it on reddit WTF and posted it here because I thought people would find it interesting.

It's actually a quite disturbing vision of how people treat each other for a discount.

In the years covered in this list (2012-2006), there have been 238 fatalities due to lightning strikes.

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/statistics.htm

But that covers all days of the year, right? So the corresponding number for just Black Friday would probably be 0 or 1 deaths by lightning.

Ok, how many times does lighting strike the US every day? How many Black Fridays are there every year?

Let's just assume that this level of violence is constant, and there's a Black Friday every day of the year (which doesn't make much sense at all): Multiply those 4 deaths by 365 and it's not hard to see that this is more fatal than lightning. However I think the nearly equally disgusting part is the fact that people are getting hurt at all. You're lining up to spend your money, calm down.

Apparently you don't know much about lightning if you are multiplying by 365.

Fair enough, re Black Friday being a single day per year. There are around 2.5MM deaths per year in the US, which works out to around 47,000 on the Black Fridays during the time period (assuming the numbers are average).

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/deaths.htm

My new metal band

Here is an excerpt from the citation provided for an incident in which 2 of the deaths were reported.

> The violence erupted on Black Friday, the traditional post-Thanksgiving start of the holiday shopping surge, but authorities indicated the shooting wasn't related to a shopping frenzy.

Anyway, 4+63 over a period of 7 years for the entire population, statistically the probability of getting killed/injured is almost 0. Do we even need such analysis?

I think the commentary lies more in the fact that it's even happening, and will likely only get worse if the trends continue. Black Friday is not a real holiday, but we [as in the U.S., mainly] have let marketers create it out of thin air, giving them our attention until they whip us into a feeding frenzy of consumption.

Obey. Consume.

The visible trend in the data provided, 2011 was the worst with over 40 injuries and 1 death. While, the preceding and succeeding years have be rather quiet.

Besides, marketers creating trends is neither a new phenomenon nor is it localized to the US, for example, marketers in India have popularized a holiday tradition in the past few years, Akshaya Tritiya, where purchasing gold is supposed to be auspicious and brings about good luck. Though it is loosely based on a religious occasion, it isn't a real holiday. Besides, the surprising bit is the prices aren't shot down to boost sales as in Black Friday, instead the prices shoot up as a result of the demand caused by the shopping frenzy.

Is there any comparison to other days?

Good question. I imagine the incidence of shopping/consumerism-related deaths and injuries is a lot lower for the rest of the year, but it would be interesting to get some numbers.

I would say this is something that should be brought to people's attention... but somehow I don't think the kind of people that do these things would care.

consumption terror (from everywhere ads) with money people actually don't own. what else could be better right now than focusing people on "important" things in life than protest about banks, injustice, poverty etc.

sad world.

What? The 4 deaths and 63 injuries? Over 6 years? Doesn't seem like it is something worth caring about, especially when participation is entirely optional.

I think optional participation once you've been properly informed of the risks, however small is fine, but uninformed participation should be discouraged.

I'm willing to bet that more people die in auto accidents getting to the store than have died at the store.

Every activity (eating vegetables, visiting your grandmother, trimming your fingernails) has some risk. Being explicitly informed of the hazards of every activity you will ever partake in would take an unreasonably long time. In general, I'm not sure it's useful to demand that people be informed of non-elevated levels of risk.

What are the risks? That you might be killed or injured? Just like on any other day of the year? One guy died of a heart condition, could have happened anytime. Another injured in a burglary attempt (apparently burglaries only happen on Black Friday?)

Optional unless you work there, like the guy that got trampled in 2008.

Sure, it doesn't really rate on the same scale as car accidents and cancer. On the other hand, this is entirely avoidable, and done for what many (myself included) would call really stupid.

Dude, cat accidents are affecting so many people! Like the other day, I was riding my cat to work, and I passed this cat accident that basically totalled 5 other cats, killing two people. It's not something to be overlooked....

Remember, November 29th is Buy Nothing Day.

https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd

Wikipedia has a somewhat more detailed summary for those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)#Violenc...

Although, the site linked here does do a more rhetorically effective job.

How sad is that I'm stunned death / injury counts are so low? I assumed 1+ people trampled to death every year.

I actually told international students here (who are really uninformed about black friday and the kind of mess it can be -- they have only heard about the great deals you can get) that they'd be best advised to just order stuff online because of things like this.

Well, they're best off ordering online not because of "stuff like this" but that hopefully they have much better things to do with their time than standing in line and dealing with chaos when they don't have to. For whatever small savings I might find on Black Friday I can't imagine going through the hassle.

If one's time is effectively worthless (which may be the case if one is unemployed or a student), one might be able to get below-cost deals by camping out by a Best Buy for a day or two in advance. But one should only do this if there is really nothing better to do, or if the recreational enjoyment of the event (perhaps by camping out with one's friends) makes it worth it.

So how does this compare to the rest of the year? How does it compare on a per shopper basis over the rest of the year? Less than one death per day, and about 10 injuries per day. What are the statistics for other events that draw large crowds?

Macabre. Effective.

Perhaps should reset the headline counter each year, with prior-year counters (and all-time since launch) somewhere below for reference.

That seems dramatic. I was struck by how low the numbers were.

That's actually a lot less than I was expecting.

Well that's a lot lower than I thought.

Seems like best to stay away from Walmart.

Good advice in general.

Walmart is just very very big (they are the largest non-state employer in the world), so it makes sense they have more cases.

South Park fan, I assume? :)

Black Friday or not, there are deaths and injuries everyday...

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