Sorry for hijacking your thread, but this reminds me of how people use the 'my chances of dying in a car accident are way higher than that' argument to make other things look out to be hardly dangerous.
When really they should think about the fact, that about 40,000 people die in car crashes in the US in 1 year. That is something like 1 in 7,500 people dying in a car crash each YEAR in the US. If you do the maths after figuring in how many years the average person lives - say 75 years, that means about 1 in 100 people will loose their life in a car crash. (leaving out the number of people left handicapped or crippled after bad car accidents).
Yet everybody considers driving cars relatively low-risk, mostly because we're just so used to driving.
Plus many people think 'I know how to drive so that wont happen to me'. I dont want to get technical, but I bet in a large percentage of those tens of thousands of serious car crashes that happen each year, there are 2 cars or more involved and you probably wouldnt be able to do anything about it.
But don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna say 'never set foot in a car again' or anything like this. Actually I drive myself and I know there are tons of other risks in life, but I just prefer living downtown in a city, where you can easily do most things without needing a car (other than going to the supermarket, the gym or the movies of course), that way driving isn't all that risky. Plus if I move to another city, which I plan on doing Ill definitely choose one, with a good public transport system.
I know thats far easier in Europe than in most US cities, but honestly think about it..people I know are scared to death, that they might have caught HIV from having unprotected sex once (yea they should be) and are worried about flying with bad unsafe airlines (I wouldnt fly with one of those either) which are risks of 1 in a few 100,000....yet they never really get scared of driving or consider using public transport more instead of driving (even if theyve had a car accident before in which they got injured), when it's really the biggest risk of all.
just something to think about...I know many ppl will want to flame me for typing this