
Things that were more likely to kill you in 1970s Britain than today - sambeau
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42324984
======
IkmoIkmo
Nice article. [https://ourworldindata.org](https://ourworldindata.org) is
quite good as well, often indicating we've made massive improvements despite
populist thought that we're living in bad times, nostalgia for the past, a la
make xyz great again.

Too bad they didn't express the data as a rate every time like say traffic
deaths. UK population grew from about 50m to 65m, or 30%. Even if all the
absolute data showed flat graphs, as an individual you'd still be
substantially better off.

This invites other questions: are we driving safer, or just doing it less.
There's data for that too, surely. A quick peek seems to show total traffic in
2012 was 10x that of 1949, and that average miles per person at least grew
until the 1990s [0].

In short, these graphs probably severely understate improvements to traffic
safety in general, and reductions in danger from traffic to each individual in
the UK.

[0] [https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/trans...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/transport/POST-briefing-on-peak-car.pdf)

~~~
jacquesm
Once the UK discovered roundabouts the number of traffic fatalities dropped
steeply. Also, present day vehicles are _much_ safer than 1970's vehicles. The
mini and the metro (1980) were about as unsafe as it gets.

~~~
flukus
> Once the UK discovered roundabouts the number of traffic fatalities dropped
> steeply

That sounded really wrong but it turns out you're correct
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#History)),
I had no idea roundabouts were such a recent thing. Something I've taken for
granted as always existing were actually quite rare not long before I was
born.

------
everdev
Not to much surprising or interesting. Healthy and safety have improved and
deaths have dropped correspondingly.

It would be more interesting to know what's more likely to kill you today than
in the 70s. Violent crime, terrorism, adventure sports?

~~~
rflrob
I can’t find any super up-to-date info on the UK murder rate, but
extrapolating trends from the early 2010s, it seems to be about the same as
the 70s [1]. Deaths by Terrorism in the UK are _way_ down [2], though if you
care whether the people likely to kill you are Irish or Islamist, I suppose
that’s you’re prerogative. No idea where to find data on adventure sports...

[1] [https://mises.org/blog/gun-control-fails-what-happened-
engla...](https://mises.org/blog/gun-control-fails-what-happened-england-
ireland-and-canada)

[2]
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/com...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/750eak/terrorism_deaths_by_year_in_the_uk/)

~~~
icebraining
Re: terrorism, it's a trend over the whole Western Europe:
[http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2016-07/we-
terro...](http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2016-07/we-
terrorism-1970-2015final.png)

The number of people killed in 2015 used to be _normal_.

~~~
jwilk
The two graphs merged:
[https://i.imgur.com/hzQ8NgW.png](https://i.imgur.com/hzQ8NgW.png)

------
Waterluvian
1% chance of your child dying before age 1 is kind of terrifying to me.

~~~
jstanley
It's still 0.4% today, which is approximately equally terrifying!

~~~
FabHK
1\. You all know though that historically, it was much much worse? From (the
excellent) ourworldindata.org, my highlights:

> Child mortality in rich countries today is much lower than 1%. This is a
> very recent development and was only reached after a _hundredfold decline_
> in child mortality in these countries. In early-modern times, child
> mortality was very high; in 18th century Sweden every third child died, and
> in 19th century Germany _every second child_ died. With declining poverty
> and increasing knowledge and service in the health sector, child mortality
> around the world is declining very rapidly: Global child mortality fell from
> 18.2% in 1960 to 4.3% in 2015; while 4.3% is still too high, this is a
> substantial achievement.

Half of all kids in Germany died, less than two centuries ago!

2\. In the developing world, it's 0.4%, in the US it's higher at 0.7%. There's
some debate over whether that's due to differences in definition, or crap
health system and huge inequality. Given the bad health outcomes in the US
generally (eg life expectancy), I lean towards the latter hypothesis.

EDIT to add sources, and typos:

[https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality](https://ourworldindata.org/child-
mortality)

[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT)

~~~
jstanley
Sure, but 0.4% is still surprisingly high to me.

This post is about the UK, which I would consider to be part of the
"developed" world.

~~~
rowyourboat
Well, we do get born at a very early stage, if you compare with other mammals
(not counting marsupials). Things simply can go wrong at that stage with no
discernible external cause (e.g. cot death).

------
mc32
Great progress on road related fatalities and smoking. While any number of
road fatalities is too many, that decrease is despite increased usage
--something we in the US have not been able to replicate, but this shows if
you take road safety seriously, it can be improved [now, I have no idea if
they initially had a relatively high number to start with]

~~~
lisper
> any number of road fatalities is too many

Why? It's easy to lower the number of road fatalities to zero: ban cars. But I
think most people would consider that too high a price to pay.

~~~
freehunter
I think that was the entire point of the rest of the post that followed.
Basically, it'd be nice to have zero, but just having fewer deaths is an
improvement.

If you have to seriously ask why it's bad to have people dying on the road, it
might be better to ask that question in a more private setting.

~~~
perl4ever
It's not pleasant dying in a nursing home because of (or after) a stroke, or
from cancer, or...

It's neither new nor shocking for people to express the opinion that the
slowest death is not the best one.

I sometimes experience discomfort in response to something as innocuous as
minimizing road deaths - it makes me wonder if humans are becoming paperclip
maximizers even before AGI is here.

See:
[https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

~~~
freehunter
It's also not pleasant for Einstein to die in a car crash before realizing his
genius, or George Washington before leading the Revolution, or Cincinnatus
before saving the Romans or...

Sure, if you're 80 and facing down a life sentence in a nursing home, do
whatever you feel is best. But if you're actively arguing that random people
dying in car accidents is a _good_ thing... you know car crashes kill children
too, right? They kill good people too, right? They kill smart people. They
kill anyone, by pure random luck. They kill your mom, they kill your spouse,
they kill your child.

If someone wants to die, sure, let them die. If someone wants to live, I think
it's best to minimize the ways they could unintentionally die. But by all
means, if you want to stop wearing a seatbelt, you go right ahead. I'm going
to buckle mine anyway. And I'm going to try to avoid smallpox, because I am
not absolutely insane and I don't have some crazy death fetish.

~~~
perl4ever
Random people died from accidents with horses, before cars. Some of them
famous.

I wear my seatbelt, but I also have a motorcycle license. I have a modern car
with all the latest safety features, but I also have an old car without
airbags or ABS. I think phrasing like "crazy death fetish" is unreasonable and
histrionic.

Protecting people from harm is something that can be seen as horrifying when
taken to the extreme.

See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands)

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SideburnsOfDoom
Unfortunately these aren't consistently presented in a way that makes them
comparable.

Drowning is down from 600 deaths per year to 400. Road fatalities down from
7000-8000 to 2000

So it's clear that cars and trucks are still a bigger threat than rip tides
and lakes ever were.

And then we get to fatalities at work presented in "deaths per 100 000
workers" which at "2" is small compared to the lung cancer mortality rates -
around 40-80 on (I think) the same scale.

But you can't directly compare all of the items discussed.

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aaaqqqq
Is boredom on the list?

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fwdpropaganda
At some point we have to start demanding the whole information in the
headline.

Example, wouldn't this be a better headline for this specific article:

Things more likely to kill you in 70s UK than today: Winter, Workplace,
Infancy, Roads, Drowning, Heart Disease, Smog, and Lung Cancer.

Then you decide whether you'll click through. My guess is it would no longer
make it to the front page.

~~~
mrkurt
No that wouldn't be a better headline. Doing that to everything sounds awful.
Decent articles are much more valuable than tweet sized factoids, if you
reduce them to facts without context you end up in a really bad place.
Statements of fact with no supporting work are powerfully scary.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
Did I say "to everything"? Or did I say to list articles?

~~~
mrkurt
Neither ... but this isn't a list article in the bad sense, either. I doubt
many throwaway lists get on the front page.

