In the continuing series of “compare and contrast”. Aka, perspective, or as Merriam puts it:
to view things in their true relations or relative importance
news.bbc reports that UK road deaths reach record low.
There were 2,538 people killed on Britain’s roads in 2008, which is the lowest annual total since records began in 1926.
a plane holds, what? 300 people …
So that is 8.5 jumbo jet plane crashes EVERY year, where every single person died. In fact, that is 8.5 jumbo jets carrying only British people.
2,974 victims and the 19 hijackers died in the 9/11 attacks.
In 2003, 42,643 people where killed in road related accidents in America.
That is 14 events similar to 9/11, every year.
And while we are here, consider this:
- 2538 UK people, in a population of 60.9 million is 0.0041%
- 42,643 USA people, in a population of 303 million is 0.014%
You are more than 3 times as likely to be killed by a car in America as you are in the UK. (per head of population, on average, etc).
What this doesn’t account for is that Americans travel more miles by car than people in the UK. Whether that is right or wrong is another matter, but given Americans drive more it’s perhaps not suprising that there are more road related accidents.
Can anyone find any data/stats on average miles driven per capita in the UK and USA because the best I’ve found so far is Per capita car mileage in Britain in 1977 was slightly lower than in the United States in 1950. Which sadly doesn’t help much.
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