Traveling and Danger One thing which surprises me is the fact so many billionaires want to get a ride on a rocket. I would have thought they wouldn’t have wanted to take the chance, but apparently, I was wrong. When I checked the odds of something going wrong on a manned mission, I was surprised to find it was stated to be 2 percent and a total failure to achieve orbit was only 1 percent. The odds of having a deadly car accident in one’s lifetime are 1.08 percent. While this seems to be about the same as not achieving orbit, it really isn’t because think about how many times you drive your car verses the one time you might get into that rocket. The safest mode of travel is air travel. Air travel is so safe the odds of being killed in a crash are higher than those needed to win a Powerball jackpot. They are 0.000001 percent. The odds of being in a plane crash are 1 in 260,256, but you have to remember this includes light planes also. If we consider only commercial planes the odds of being injured are only 1 in 11 million. Trains are relatively safe, but there are accidents which come from many different causes, such as derailments, collisions with vehicles, defective tracks, unprotected railway crossings, pedestrians. In 2022 it is said there were 1259 derailments in the United States. Not all of the trains carry passengers however. One of the statistics was alarming, it is about 500 pedestrians die each year because they were hit by a train. Another alarming statistic is there are about 2,000 vehicles being hit by trains in the United States every year. One might think technology could prevent at least some of these accidents. The statistics for motor vehicle accidents when compared to airplanes is brutal. In 2022 42,514 people died from motor vehicle accidents in the United States and 2.38 million were injured. If we break this down, 61 percent of deaths occurred in passenger cars, 18 percent were pedestrians, 15 percent were motor cycles , 3 percent were bicycles and 2 percent were in large trucks. What about a bus? According to what I have found online, there are more than 13,000 bus accidents per year in the United States. They are said to be 1.3 percent which result in deaths and 51 percent which result in injury. When I think about all these injuries, I can’t help but feel self-driving vehicles have to be safer than ones driven by humans. So far, from what I have seen, there might still be an occasional accident, but far less than what we have now. I realize when one self-driving vehicle gets into an accident it becomes big news which makes many people think these vehicles are far more dangerous than they really are. Did you ever wonder how safe were horse drawn wagons? There are not many statistics, some have checked out the Amish in Pennsylvania and found most of the accidents they have are due to being hit in the rear by cars. Some Amish have died and more were injured. In about 17 years there were 625 car and wagon accidents. These resulted in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries. Still, if the Amish had driven cars, they may have had even more accidents over so many years. Safety is not guaranteed even when a person is walking. I am not talking about crime, just accidents in the United States. Over 7,500 pedestrians were killed after being hit by a vehicle in 2022. Most of the vehicle accidents with pedestrians occur in urban areas. To be more exact, 73 percent. Many of them occur at night and in non-intersections. It is said the average of deaths of pedestrians is 145 per week. It is also said over 21 percent of pedestrians hit by vehicles are severely injured. Not all pedestrian accidents involve motor vehicles as we know. Pedestrian non-vehicle accidents are much rarer. So far, I have talked about accidents on land and in the air, but we can’t forget the oceans, rivers and lakes. I would think one of the worst things to happen on a cruise is a fire on the ship. The ships which are said to have the most fires are container ships. It is said the average rate is about one fire every nine days. One of the reasons for this is sometimes these ships are transporting hazardous cargo which catches or causes fires. Cruise ships are said to have fires of only six or seven times a year. But fires are not the only hazards. When we think of collisions by ships, we tend to think they are with other ships, but sometimes they are with structures like bridges. When this fact was studied, it was found that several bridges in the United States were at risk for a ship collision. It was found the risk for some bridges was far higher than first thought. Some bridges when studied resulted in the calculation of a ship collision every 20 to 50 years. We know the Titanic struck an iceberg than sank. Today many ships sail on cruises to Alaska and even edge closer to the North Pole. Did you ever wonder what the odds were of a ship hitting an iceberg again? While this is not impossible, it is estimated the odds for a ship sailing to iceberg-prone areas hitting one are 1 in 2,000 voyages. Not all ships sail on the ocean, and this does not mean they are out of danger completely. An incredible number of ships have sunk on the Great Lakes in the United States. The estimates range from 6,000 to as many as 25,000. It is thought Lake Erie has the most. The lake with the least shipwrecks is Lake Superior, which by the way is the deepest. The main cause of most of the shipwrecks is the environment, meaning harsh weather. It is said Lake Erie has more shipwrecks than the Bermuda Triangle. Getting down to smaller boats for recreation, we find recreational boating accidents were responsible for 564 deaths in 2023 in the United States. Off the top of my head, I would think some of these might have been due to impairment by drugs or alcohol and others by recklessness. The number of accidents for that same year was 3,844. I guess the bottom line has to be one cannot eliminate all danger when we travel, and we can’t even do it if we stay home.
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