Don’t Panic
What is more dangerous? A gun or your pool?
Better think carefully. You are much more likely to die from drowning or from just walking down the street than from an accidental gun incident.
Risk statistics always show us that emotion is not a useful way to make decisions – especially concerning risk.
Be careful out there– but your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is.
Wired compiled the number of incidents of various ways that people peish and copiled them into a summary. This data is based on the number of mortalities in each category throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from best available data).
S E V E R E
Driving off the road: 254,419
Falling: 146,542
Accidental poisoning: 140,327H I G H
Dying from work: 59,730
Walking down the street: 52,000.
Accidentally drowning: 38,302E L E V A T E D
Killed by the flu: 19,415
Dying from a hernia: 16,742G U A R D E D
Accidental firing of a gun: 8,536
Electrocution: 5,171L O W
Being shot by law enforcement: 3,949
Terrorism: 3147
Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554
Wired News: One Million Ways to Die.
Sources: National Highway and Safety Agency (.pdf), National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 50, No. 15 (09/16/2002) (.pdf), US Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Insurance Information Institute.
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