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> Following up to Roger
> >> However, if you do not wish to ignore risk and wish to know the
> >> level, it *has* to be fatalities per distance you compare.
> >
> >Only if you measure your life in terms of miles travelled. 
> I measure my journies in miles travelled, though!
That's as maybe but in the real world the choice of route will have a
much bigger difference to the risk than the absolute distance of any
variation. And in any case ultimately you have the choice not just on
the route and mode of transport but whether or not to make the journey
at all.
> >Call me a heretic but I think the very notion is seriously flawed.
> >
> >Looking at driving in particular:
> >
> >On the one hand the average is a conflation of disparate elements that
> >are very dissimilar. The young and inexperienced have a much greater
> >accident rate than the experienced drivers. Those who drive more have a
> >lower accident rate per mile than those who drive less: indeed it used
> >to be said that on a distance basis that well known fact that women tend
> >to be safer drivers becomes fiction.
> Ok. you're telling me the numbers for self drive travel should
> include a fair + or - factor, I think that applies to all stats,
> you would not consider a 1% difference but you might consider a
> 1000% difference.
I don't actually know what the differences are but I suspect that there
is at least a factor of 10 between the likelihood of a newly qualified
driver being involved in an accident and the same driver many years on
(assuming that driver has survived the inexperience).
> >And on the other hand at all times we are exposed to some degree of risk
> >depending on what we are (or perhaps are not) doing. That risk generally
> >increases uniformly with time regardless of what the activity is.
> no, not "regardless", consider sleeping and russian roulette
Sleeping is such a low risk activity that it is difficult to think of
any particular aspect that is actually life threatening but to the
extent that such risks exist they are likely to be greater the longer
you sleep. As to russian roulette the quicker you play it the shorter
your life but that surely is of little consequence when you are unlikely
to survive much more than 100 spins of the revolver cylinder.
> >Thus for my money at least it is time exposed to danger that is more
> >important than the distance.
> An early motor racer believed your theory, he raced across
> junctions flat out to minimise time in the danger area.
Whether that works or not depends on whether the driver has the right of
way. I was out walking my dog late one night some years ago and I
actually witnessed a young driver take a crossroads without slowing
down. He missed be rammed by less than 5 seconds. However motorcycle
display teams have sufficient practice to make crossing right angle
traffic seem like a piece of cake.
> If someone is shooting at you, the "time" you put your head above
> the parapet is the measure.
> In travel it has to be what is the risk of getting from A to B by
> method n.
> If you are happy to go from A to .5B by method 1
> and A to 2B by method 2 (both in 1 hour) then your method is
> valid.
I am more likely to opt for doing it in half the time.
> >Anyone who drives should be aware that the faster one drives the more
> >serious the consequences of any accident but more importantly the less
> >chance one has of avoiding an accident caused by the error of other road
> >users. For any journey there must be an optimum speed where the
> >reduction in time exposed to danger outweighs the increased risk of
> >becoming involved in someone else's carelessness.
> Consider a car turning right from left lane without looking
> somewhere along your route of 10 miles.
> For the sake of argument, to make it easier to see, assume your
> speed at either 10mph or 1000mph
> At 10 you would have a good chance of not being there when the
> turn took place, at 1000 mph you would have a far greater chance
I am not sure I follow your argument. If the instance of idiots turning
right out of a left hand lane with their eyes closed on a particular
stretch of road is 1 per hour then at 10 mph it is very likely that you
will be on that stretch of road during such an occurrence and also very
likely that you will be able to avoid it. At 1000 miles per hour you
only have a 1 in 100 chance of being on that stretch of road at the same
time as the idiot and odds of perhaps 1 in 30 of hitting the idiot.
But these are absurd speeds to consider and the manoeuvre of turning
right from a left hand lane is typically only seen at roundabouts. Take
a more practical example. The delayed reaction driver who pulls out of a
minor road only when the gap he is aiming for has almost passed him (or
her) by. If the 2 representative drivers are respectively doing 50 and
100 mph then the faster driver has only half the risk of being the
driver at hazard and still has the chance of driving round the hazard
however close he is when the idiot pulls out. Whether he is actually
safer is a moot point but someone driving at 100 mph is going to be a
good deal more alert than his oppo who thinks 50 mph is as fast as is
comfortable.
> >On a more general note the choice of mode of transport is to a major
> >extent governed by convenience. It is not generally convenient to walk
> >miles when going shopping, cycle tens of miles when commuting or use
> >public transport on a journey that doesn't fit easily into the
> >restricted schedules of mass transportation. It is not the level of risk
> >that usually governs the choice although I for one wouldn't like to take
> >up cycling again and it has to be said that in the recent past I have
> >several times walked up to 10 miles to avoid the necessity of using
> >public transport. I particularly don't like diesel engined buses and I
> >don't think I have been on a bus or coach for more than 30 years.
> I agree with all of that.
Oh you get travel sick as well
--
Roger Chapman so far this year 17 summits
New - 11 (Marilyns 0, Sweats 1, Outlying Fells 10)
Repeats - 6 (Marilyns 1, Sweats 2, Wainwrights 6, Outlying Fells 0)
