Doctors say Roller Coasters may be Unsafe!

Funny thing about statistics when you compare apples and oranges.....

Not too terribly long ago I saw a comparison in which various transportation forms were compared in terms of fatalities per million passenger miles. Using that comparison, aircraft do very well, buses do well, trains do OK, cars do poorly, and roller coasters positively suck.

But when you look at the numbers, you can see why: Look at the number of miles travelled by each! Most coaster rides are a half-mile or so; most airline trips are in excess of 200 miles. So I tried an experiment. Using some estimates I estimated the number of trips given for each form of transport and worked out the number of trips per fatality. When I did that, the roller coaster looked to be the safest way to travel, and suddenly airplanes looked dangerous, though still not as dangerous as automobiles.

So, which measurement is more worthwhile for comparison? Miles per fatality or trips per fatality?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Fatalities per trip per mile? I hate fractions.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Neither way is not a  good comparison, once again a controlled subject(rollercoaster) is being compaired to uncontrolled subjects(airlines, cars and buses and so on). How many people have heard of a coaster being brought down by a bird(or any other type of animal) or ice or any other type of weather. Roller coaster run the same track and are checked every day, run all those other forms of transportation under EXACT situtions as coasters and all those will be just as safe, since you dont have the human error equation involved. Remember we are comparing a coaster that does the same thing day after day to subjects that have so many diffrent variables to cause them to kill people. This is only my opinion please dont jump down my throat for it. Would you say a animal in a cage(controlled subject) is safer than a animal in the wild(uncontrolled all the unkowns that can happen) what would you say is safer or has a higher death rate.
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Army Rangers lead the way

*** This post was edited by supermandl on 2/5/2002. ***

Do you have the link to the videos?
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supermandl:

Obviously control is a factor in the cause of the result, but the fact is cars aren't controlled and coasters are, therefore the rates are what they are.  The conditions are inherent to the forms of transportions

If you want to get into if wishes were fishes, suppose that coasters had shoulder belts, airbags and controlled crush structures.  It doesn't make any sense because coasters are coasters and cars are cars.

The bottom line is this.  If we start with big concerns about everything that kills one person per year in the US, we will have 100,000 new programs costing hundreds of  billions of dollars to combat insignificant risks. 

Jim, I think coasters are safe and never said otherwise on this forum, I just dont like a controlled subject being compared to a non controlled subject. I dont want more controll over coasters, I just dont like the comparison its not fair for car or planes or bus's to compare the two its makes them sound so unsafe. You say they are transportation are they regulated by NTSB, I dont know and I'm not trying to be a smart*****please dont take it as so. All I have said about this subject is thats is not right to compare the 2 and never anything about coasters having a new program to find out if they are safe.
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Army Rangers lead the way

*** This post was edited by supermandl on 2/5/2002. ***

I didn't say coasters are transportation.  After all they always end up within a very short distance of where they started.  Coasters are entertainment devices.  The mileage statistics are just an interesting curiosity.  Coasters are not regulated by the NTSB.
While they don't run on rails, commercial airliners are in many ways highly controlled.  That's why we have air traffic controllers and electronic navigational aids to tell them where to go.
Automobiles are much more dangerous than any other form of transportation.  The per mile death rate is 10 times that of any other major form of transportation.  And obviously 40,000 deaths per year is not trivial.  As I've said often before, you are 10 to 20 times as likely to be killed on the drive to the park as you are to be killed on a ride in the park.

*** This post was edited by Jim Fisher on 2/5/2002. ***