My bold criticism might anger the hot air balloon people, which would be a real concern if any of them lived along a very narrow line directly upwind of me.
alt-text:
A chart that categorizes various modes of transportation based on their practicality and danger level:
Zone of Practicality:
Trains
Airliners
Boats
Walking
Cars
Scooters
Bicycles
Zone of Specialty and Recreational Vehicles:
Motorcycles
Helicopters
Light aircraft
Go karts
Skateboards
Rollerblades
Skis
Unicycles
Sleds
Bumper cars
?????:
Hot air balloons
“Hot air balloons are the optimal mode of transportation, if your optimization algorithm has a sign error.”
Hit a pothole going 25mph in your car. Hit the same pothole going 25mph on your scooter. I'll come visit you in the hospital after the scooter one and we can talk about how cars are obviously safer.
I ride an electric scooter, all it takes is one crack in the road that I'm less than prepared for and I'm going down hard.
The roads are shit here. So badly cracked that I vibrate violently when I try to ride my scooter over them at like 10km/h. And that's while dodging potholes.
They are more dangerous exactly because of the existence of cars. Cars are a small fortress that makes others less safe while keeping its contents safer. Unless they hit another fortress.
That only makes sense if you cycle among cars, but that makes cars dangerous, not bikes. If you remove cars out of equation by cycling on pavement or cycle route, the danger is gone.
Pedestrians get hit by cars all the time yet walking is rated the safest.
Heeeeell no. I had I minor fall on a scooter last week. I slipped at medium speed because of an uneven wet floor. I'm still fucked up and can't walk properly
Tell you what, you drive your bike into a car and maybe the concussion will change your thinking enough to make it believable that bikes are more dangerous.
We're not rating danger for the damn planet here. It's obviously danger for the user - that's the one who's buying the product. Why would anyone care about the safety of others over their own safety?
motorcycles should 100% be in the zone of practicality, especially with modern sleek electric ones.
skateboards should be the bridge between practical and recreational, provided you have sensible infrastructure and short distances they have distinct benefits.
I'm here to say that if there's snow, skis win on practicality. Almost every winter, there's at least one day when you will have some people skiing to work in Oslo, a city of 700 000 inhabitants, with a metro system. Because when there's 10 cm of snow in the streets, skis are the quickest and easiest way to get anywhere.
Planes are safer per mile but not per trip. One could argue that if people spent the same amount of time in both then it would be far more fatalities on aircrafts.
Cars are technically the major source of danger for bikes and scooters.
also a fun fact, while commercial aviation is very safe, private planes are much more dangerous, being almost as dangerous per mile as a regular car (and you get a lot more miles per hour of travel)
private planes are much more dangerous, being almost as dangerous per mile as a regular car
that is because they are operated by semi-competent people who often have less practice then they have in car.
imagine how competent driver you are when you have your fresh license. it is the same with piloting license. and now imagine you are a hobby pilot and can afford to spend in the cockpit 3 hours per month. your skill is not really going to get significantly better. you are probably flying airplane that is at the end of its life, because that is only one you can afford, and there may be no one keeping an eye on you telling you "this is not how we do it, it is risky, dangerous, and you will get someone killed".
Sometimes I walk to work; sometimes I drive my car; other times i ride a bicycle. Whichever option I pick, I hate anyone who isn't doing the same thing.
Are hot air balloon not like super safe, last accident I think was a guy that made his own DIY hot air balloon but before that it has been relatively safe. I think America has only seen like less than 800 deaths total.
I'd guess it's because unicycles are used in a much narrower range of circumstances. Few people are being hit by cars commuting to work on a unicycle, nor are there many mountain-unicyclists getting injured.
There are basically no unsafe ways to get off of a unicycle. You can fall in any direction and just end up standing next to your unicycle. Compare that to a bicycle "over the handle bars"-accident.
Edit: sorry that's not true, see this from the Netherlands:
Voor het vierde jaar op rij kwamen meer fietsers (270; 39%) dan inzittenden van personenauto's (194; 28%) om in het verkeer. De meeste doden in het verkeer vallen onder ouderen: in 2023 waren 375 (55%) verkeersdoden 60 jaar of ouder. Kinderen (0-14 jaar) komen juist relatief weinig om in het verkeer; in 2023 waren dat er 20 (3%).
Het risico om te overlijden in het verkeer, het aantal verkeersdoden per afgelegde kilometer, is het ho ogst voor gemotoriseerde tweewielers. Het risico voor brom- en snorfietsers en motorrijders is ongeveer dertig keer zo hoog als het risico voor inzittenden van een personenauto. Voor fietsers en voetgangers is het overlijdensrisico respectievelijk acht en zes keer zo hoog als voor auto-inzittenden, in de periode 2012-2021.
Translation:
For the fourth year in a row, more cyclists (270; 39%) than passenger car occupants (194; 28%) were killed in traffic. Most traffic fatalities occur among the elderly: in 2023, 375 (55%) traffic fatalities were 60 years or older. Children (0-14 years) are relatively rarely killed in traffic; in 2023 there were 20 (3%).
The risk of dying in traffic, the number of traffic fatalities per kilometer travelled, is highest for motorized two-wheelers. The risk for moped and light-moped riders and motorcyclists is approximately thirty times higher than the risk for passenger car occupants. For cyclists and pedestrians, the risk of death is eight and six times higher, respectively, than for car occupants, in the period 2012-2021.
Hot air balloons are a very useful mode of transportation if your goal is to take aerial photographs from them (although admittedly nowadays you could also use drones). It's always a question of what you want to achieve.
It is Wikimedia Commons, not Wikipedia. That is where most of the images used on Wikipedia and other WMF projects are stored. It has categories for nearly everything under the sun.
Even with heavier propulsion, blimps and rigid airships are completely beholden to the weather as a light breeze can completely prevent landing or cause crashes.
I'm not sure I agree that unicycles are safer than roller blades. But that's probably because I am comfortable on roller blades and don't know how to unicycle, so for me, the opposite is true.
As both an extreme unicyclist & rollerblader, unicycles are actually incredibly safe. More safe than a bicycle. The top speed is very slow comparatively, and if you fall... You fall on your feet. Forwards? Feet. Backwards? Feet. Sideways? Feet. If your feet were strapped into the pedals (like rollerblades...) it would be a deathtrap.
Trains and planes and others are a bit wonky for this chart. If I needed to take get to work, train and plane immediately resort to walking the entire way (unless get in a car, on a bike, fall just after). So while traveling across the country for a trip may be convenient on a train... Wait, unless I only have the weekend or a short work trip/vacation, because then it would take to much time and be inconvenient. Tried to find an example. Travel to Las Vegas from Nashville. Plane, ~3 hour flight plus let's say 2 hour travel and airport bs. So 5 hours there, 5 back. Driving: 26 hours (each way). Walking: Death by dehydration in desert. Train: not even listed as there was no routes.
They are also significantly more dangerous than an airplane though. The skill and speed needed to cope with an engine failure is a lot less forgiving and helicopters nearly always spend more time at lower altitude. Also the number of mechanical failures that result in everybody aboard essentially guaranteed dying is higher in a helicopter. Especially vs a small airplane with a parachute (parachute systems on helicopters are extremely rare especially due to altitude requirements)
I really wish the x axis was average distance traveled and the y axis was danger.
I get that the way this graph was designed was for humor and to highlight hot air balloons, but if you’re looking for a safe vehicle for a specific distance, it really doesn’t help out in any way. It probably wouldn’t be safe to drive my car across the Atlantic Ocean.
why are scooters practical and motorcycles not? I only ride a motorcycle. any distance too long for bycicle or inconvenient with public transit, I take my motorcycle.
Looks like only because they're presented as dangerous. Convenience - wise they're still the same. Practicality seems to be defined here as a balance between danger and convenience.
The fact that airplane travel is safer than cars is a myth invented to promote airplane travel.
Well, it is not fully a myth, but to get to that result they measure per mile, and that greatly favor airplane travel.
If you instead measure how likely you are to die on your next trip, then the dangers of airplane travel will significantly exceed car travel and other means of transportation.
Are you aware how many flights take place every day?
Vs
How many fatal accidents pr flight?
The fact is that almost every time a fatal accident happens in a (commercial) plane anywhere in the world, you hear about it. Because if a plane crashes a lot of people die in one dramatic (and rare) event.
Fatal car accidents litteraly happen every minute of every day. Almost none of them go on the news. (Cause reporting them all would be impossible).
I think you underestimate the number of trips per car per day. Most people will take more trips by car per month than they will fly for their lifetime.
In Sweden , a country of 10 million, we have about 150 people killed per year from car accidents, yet most adults travel by car daily.
That is millions of trips per day, and only half a death.
Trains, scooters and/ motorcycles are convenient for travel? I mean sure, if you never carry anything anywhere and/or you love how every other person in the world smells after they finish their 12 hour shift of breaking big rocks with smaller rocks.