
The Tragic Data Behind Selfie Fatalities - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/the-tragic-data-behind-selfie-fatalities/
======
savanaly
>To an alarming degree, selfie deaths seem to plague India. Here, 19
individuals — 40% of all selfie-related fatalities — met their demise. This
can’t solely be attributed to India’s large population (China, by contrast,
has only one reported death).

Two comments based on that quote alone:

1) These numbers are ridiculously low. You can find 50 people dying worldwide
every year from X-related fatalities where X is just about anything.

2) They acknowledge a crucial fact in their second sentence, that they aren't
bothering to correct for population or selfie-frequency in any of the
demographics they compare (across countries in this case). Of what use are the
numbers, then? May as well compare non-price-level-adjusted prices of goods
across countries.

~~~
mturmon
They seem to have done the research by Google news stories, presumably with
English-language queries. Much of the media in India is English language, but
little in China.

Shorter: GIGO. That chart had no business in the article.

------
civilian
This is an economics website--- shouldn't we be looking at the _rate_ of
selfie deaths?

Over 1 million selfies are taken a day[0], so your death rate of dying while
taking a selfie is 28deaths (in 2015) / 360million (seflies taken in 2015).
Each selfie has a 1 in 12,857,142 chance of causing you death.

I'm pretty meh about it. These are people chasing glory and fame. Taking
extreme selfies is probably safer than going to war or becoming a kingpin.

[0] [http://stylecaster.com/beauty/selfies-
infographic/](http://stylecaster.com/beauty/selfies-infographic/)

~~~
greydius
> Each selfie has a 1 in 12,857,142 chance of causing you death

That's assuming every selfie has an equally likely chance of causing death,
which I think we can all agree is not the case.

But yeah, it's extremely difficult for me to muster any compassion for people
that befall the horrible consequences of their own stupid decisions. To
paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks: "They were assholes. I'm glad they're
dead."

~~~
oh_sigh
Being stupid doesn't make you an asshole. You sound like more of an asshole
than any random person dying because they did something stupid.

------
wtbob
> Polls have shown that 30% of all photographs taken by 18 to 24 year-olds are
> selfies — so the average age here (21) doesn’t come as much of a surprise:
> it makes sense that the demographic taking the most selfies also perishes
> the most in the process.

That's sloppy writing. 18-24­–year-olds might be taking the most selfies, but
that statistics doesn't support that.

------
SeanDav
OT:

> _" In march of 2014, a young man posed for a selfie atop a boxcar. Diverted,
> he was unaware of the 35,000-volt livewire just beside him."_

These articles always quote high Voltage numbers as being dangerous. It is not
the Volts that are particularly dangerous, but the amps. A static shock you
get from a carpet or doorknob etc can be as much as 25,000 Volts and you
barely notice it. A 100 Volt shock with 50 amps behind it can kill you very
easily.

~~~
Ma8ee
The higher the voltage the higher the current through the body. Now the exact
resistance of a person varies enormously, in particular if we take into
account things like rubber boots or if the person managed to ground herself.
But as long as the system can deliver it, the current through the body will be
250 times higher when the voltage is 25000 V than when it is 100 V.

Now a very low current through the heart might kill you, so with a little bit
of bad luck or stupidity you'll die from a 100 V source. Like you are
replacing a lightbulb in an old fixture with one wet hand resting the other
one on the kitchen sink.

25000 V will almost certainly kill you. The moisture outside you rubber boots
probably has low enough resistance to let a deadly current through your body.

The exception is of course the static shocks. Here you are saved by the
extremely low total charge.

To summarize, yes it is the current that kills you, but it is the voltage that
matters.

~~~
theoh
Not to mention the fact that, for example, high frequency AC is pretty
harmless at any voltage because (waves hands) the current travels over the
surface of the body... Or something.

------
Jedd

      > In general, India has a very high drowning fatality rate.
      > Each year, 86,000 people drown in the country, roughly 20%
      > of all drowning deaths worldwide. 
    

Isn't India roughly 20% of world population anyway, making this number
entirely consistent & unremarkable?

~~~
anuragbiyani
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

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jetskindo
In other words, there are very low risk of death while taking selfies.

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jacquesm
The difference is that now we have proof, but there is no way of knowing if
the 'selfie' (I hate that word) was the cause or not. It's a bit like blaming
911 for the death of people dying while calling that number.

------
herbig
Author writes a whole article extrapolating uninformed claims from a single
wikipedia article. No sources listed likely because it would be too obvious
that no real research was done.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie-
related_injurie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie-
related_injuries_and_deaths)

Priceonomics is usually higher quality than this. This feels more like a quick
college term paper.

------
andrewclunn
Wait, falling coconuts? How is that not the headline?

~~~
ryporter
That's what I thought, too, but it's apparently an urband legend. [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_coconut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_coconut)

~~~
throwaway_xx9
No, it's not an urban legend.

Commercial properties prune their palm trees regularly to avoid falling
coconuts.

Though I worry more about jacktrees. Their melons can weigh over 100 pounds!

------
stevewilhelm
On a similar note, I recall noting that the all of the Independence Day
fireworks injury articles I saw last July reported male victims.

------
em3rgent0rdr
Accidental deaths from Erotic Asphyxiation exceed those from Plane Crashes and
Selfies combined.

------
mdonahoe
I'm guessing the biggest subcategory is car crashes while taking a selfie, but
I didn't see it specifically mentioned in the article.

How were car accidents not at the top of the accidental death list?

------
tracker1
And all of them Darwin Award nominees...

~~~
wookasz
Right? They say tragedy. I say natural selection.

~~~
oh_sigh
Every death is natural selection.

You are stupid.

~~~
alblue
No, not every death is natural selection. In fact, most of them aren't since
the majority of deaths worldwide are either age related or age related
illnesses.

Natural selection is random processes that weed out certain traits
(biological, physical, social) before those have been passed on to the next
generation. This typically means before the entity has had time to reproduce.
If you have deaths after reproduction then the traits can still be passed down
genetically. Though the longer post birth maturation period can still have an
effect.

The deaths reported in the original article were all removing stupid people
from the world; thanks to their actions the average level of the stupidity of
humans has decreased slightly.

Their deaths should act as a warning to try and reduce further stupidity in
the world; though some humans are especially bad at learning from other's
mistakes.

~~~
drdeca
Unless the person became infertile, why would death by old age not be
considered part of natural selection? The people who die of old are are unable
to have more children, because they are dead. They are also unable to further
contribute to the fitness of their descendants.

A person's reproduction isn't just whether they did or not, but how much they
did.

when people use language like "thanks to" when talking about evolution, I
think it attaches too much of a value thing, such that people sort of smuggle
in the idea that a thing that happens is good, by hiding it in the description
saying that it happens.

Natural selection is, in its respectable form, about what is, not about what
ought.

That's not to say one can't say related things about what ought, but I think
one should be sure to clearly express when one is doing one versus when one is
doing the other.

~~~
brc
People of old age do become infertile. 50% of the population has a 100% chance
of becoming infertile before they are even 'old'.

Genes don't care about the old. They care about reproduction.

~~~
oh_sigh
Read about the grandmother hypothesis.

------
js2
I want to know more about the drownings.

~~~
ianferrel
I would guess that they're basically the same as the first category: people
falling off of things. Just that they fall into water (and either can't swim
or maybe hit their head on the way down).

