87. The Season of Death

We know that summertime brings far too many fatal accidents. But you may be surprised if you dig into the numbers.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 0:45Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Upfront payment, $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20GB hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by ChatGPT. ChatGPT Work is a new way to work in ChatGPT. ChatGPT Work can pull info from across your apps and connect to your tools to help you create finished work. You can even automate work in ChatGPT with the Scheduled Tasks feature, and the whole

• 2:11Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:30Speaker 01

  From APM, American Public Media and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace. Here's the host of Marketplace, Kai Rizdal.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Time now for a little bit of Freakonomics Radio, that moment in the broadcast every couple of weeks where we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and the blog of the same name. It is the hidden side of everything. Dubner, it is so good to talk to you again, man.

• 2:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  And to you, Kai. I missed you, too. How's your summer been?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Good, busy, busy, but good.

• 3:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Good? 'Tis, of course, the season for outdoor activity, some of which, I'm here to tell you, can have a very significant downside.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  What, like sunburn and mosquito? But what?

• 3:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  No, I'm actually talking about death. So I hate to be a killjoy in the middle of summer.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  OK.

• 3:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  But I thought it might be worthwhile to look at the relative danger of some of America's favorite summertime activities. So let's start with motorcycling. Here's Randi Samaha from the National Crash Analysis Center.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Motorcyclists are very vulnerable road users. For every 100 million vehicle mile traveled, there are over 24 riders killed.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  So when I was 20-something years old, I told my grandfather that I wanted to buy a motorcycle, and he said, "I would sooner kill you with my bare hands." He was a doctor.

• 3:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Good advice, OK. I don't know if you own a boat, Kai?

• 3:52Speaker 02

  I like boats.

• 3:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  But the boating statistics are a little bit frightening. Here's Mike Barron with the U.S. Coast Guard.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  We're roughly down to about, say, 6.2 deaths per every 100,000 boats.

• 4:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  And swimming, something most of us do. I do a lot of that in the summer. Here's Julie Gilchrist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• 4:10Speaker 05

  Overall, the drowning rate in the United States for all ages is 1.29 per 100,000.

• 4:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  And I couldn't find any stats on golfing deaths. That's what I spend my free time. I think that's relatively safe. But skydiving. Here's Nancy Corrine from the U.S. Parachute Association.

• 4:27Speaker 06

  There's been an average of maybe 22 fatalities a year. Which is about seven per 1 million skydives.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Okay, wait, so seven per million versus all those others, which is not so bad, right?

• 4:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, you know, the motorcycle death rate is based on the number of miles traveled. Swimming deaths, meanwhile, are counted on a per capita basis. Skydiving deaths, based on the number of jumps. And of course, a lot fewer people go skydiving every year than go swimming.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Help me out here, though, Freakonomics Obi-Wan. What is the message here? Are we... Oh, I know what it is. We're scared of the wrong thing.

• 5:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  That is exactly right. Human beings are generally quite bad at assessing risk. We tend to get worried about the big anomalous events. Shark attacks, for instance, which on average kill fewer...

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know why? Because they're scary.

• 5:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, they are scary, and they get a lot of news coverage. And then when they get a lot of news coverage, we're convinced that they're a lot more common than they are. Five people, on average, worldwide, die from unprovoked shark attacks. Meanwhile, in the US alone, in a given year, 4,500 people die from motorcycle accidents and another 4,000 or so from drowning.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, but here's the thing. I could step off the curb in front of Marketplace Global Headquarters here this afternoon on my way to get a cup of coffee.

• 5:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  God forbid, but yes, you could.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  And I could be hit by a bus. I mean, what am I supposed to do?

• 5:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, you're going to do what you want to do.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yes, I am.

• 5:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  And I'm not saying you should be overly scared of things you shouldn't be. But there is a lot to learn at looking at these numbers, just taking a step back and doing it. One piece of data that really jumps out at you is this. The ability of alcohol to help make bad things happen. Okay, so listen to this. About 30% of all motorcyclists who died were legally drunk. The Coast Guard tells us that alcohol was the primary contributing factor in about 16% of the boating fatalities.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  What about skydiving? I mean, people don't drink and skydive, do they?

• 6:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know, there are no hard and fast stats on it. We did ask... Here's Nancy Karine again from the Parachute Association.

• 6:28Speaker 06

  For the most part, skydivers aren't really interested in... Doing that kind of thing, Skydab is fun enough. You're having a good time and, you know, why would you add that extra element of risk?

• 6:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know, Kai, this raises an interesting point. If an activity is prima facie dangerous, maybe it scares people away from adding a layer of danger by drinking, you know?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, but hang on a minute, right? Because motorcycling is prima facie, although I always thought it was prima facie, but it's prima facie dangerous, but people drink and motorcycle all the time.

• 7:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, to some people it is and to some people plainly it's not. I mean, I tend to agree with you, especially riding bike without a helmet. You know, helmets are estimated to prevent about 40% of crash deaths among motorcyclists. And yet, there are a lot of bikers out there who would much prefer to ride a bike than to not and to ride a bike without a helmet. Look, if safety is your number one concern this summer, not saying it should be, but if it is, I've got the ultimate activity for you and everybody out there.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  All right, what's up? Hit me with it.

• 7:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  You stay inside, you listen to your radio.

• 7:30Speaker 07

  Stephen Dubner.

• 7:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Taking the coward's way out, yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 07

  That's right. Hey, man, I'm all right with that.

• 7:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, podcast listeners. Coming up on next week's podcast, the second half of our two-part episode Freakonomics Goes to College. The central question, is a college degree really worth all that money and effort? And I asked Steve Levitt about the magic that happens in the college classroom.

• 8:12Speaker 07

  Obviously, I teach my students. I teach them very specific things, but I know that when I talk to them years later, they don't remember anything that I taught them. I mean, I can ask them the most simple questions about the material we covered and they have no recollection whatsoever, the typical students.

• 8:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's next time on Freakonomics Radio.

• 8:46Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 9:19Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 9:50Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 10:21Speaker 08

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