[pct-l] Hiking .vs Driving Safety

[ed faubert]

Gee Eric, 
If you think of all the trails that are hiked in the world and factor in how many folks die world wide on the trail maby we are safer out on the trail then even at home. Look at folks world wide who die in Earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes etc etc. That # will be infinitive higher then folks who die on the trails of the world.
Well maby we should all stay home and die in bed...............
 
 
--- On Fri, 3/13/09, Eric Lee <saintgimp at hotmail.com> wrote:


From: Eric Lee <saintgimp at hotmail.com>
Subject: [pct-l] Hiking .vs Driving Safety
To: "'Jim Eagleton'" <eagleton at hotmail.com>, "'pct list'" <pct-l at backcountry.net>
Date: Friday, March 13, 2009, 2:54 PM


Rambler wrote:
>
I'm not sure just how safe the pct is, but I know there are risks on the
trail.  Like most hikers, I fall somewhere in between those who never treat
water, and those who use Perell, 6 times a day.   There are many risks that
you may confront in many ways.  I don't think just making up "facts" is very
helpful.  
>

Statistics are notoriously slippery things, and I'm not a trained
statistician, and comparing thru-hiking to driving is an apples to oranges
comparison in many ways.  However, it's possible to sling some numbers
around for our own amusement.  If you don't like speculation and math, go
ahead and delete this now.

I grabbed some traffic accident statistics from 2005 (just happened to be
the first comprehensive report I found).  In 2005 there was a total
population of 296 million people in the United States.  There were 43,443
automobile fatalities and 2,699,000 automobile injuries.  On a per-capita
basis, that means that in 2005 in the United States 1 out of every 6,800
people died in a traffic accident and 1 out of every 109 people were
injured.

For PCT thru-hikers, over the last 15 years I'm aware of the following
fatalities:

* Jane and Flicka Rodman, struck by a vehicle in 1995 when the driver fell
asleep.  Four our purposes, these were traffic fatalities, not trail
fatalities.
* John Lowder fell to his death in 1999.
* John Donovan got lost and died in 2005.
* No Way Ray fell to his death in 2006.

How many thru-hikers start the trail each year?  I've heard about 300 or so
these days, though I know it was fewer fifteen years ago.  Of course, you
also have section-hikers which are impossible to count.  Since there are no
official stats I'm going to simplify things by taking 300 per year as a
rough number.  You could then say that over the last 15 years, on average 1
out of every 1,500 PCT hikers dies, which doesn't compare favorably to
traffic deaths.

Of course, a plain per-capita comparison is probably not a very good since
we're talking about use-based activities.  Transportation statistics are
usually compared based on fatalities per 100 million miles traveled, but
that's hardly fair since PCT hikers don't rack up very many miles by
comparison.  How about fatalities per hour spent?  If you use that as a
comparison, thru-hiking comes out well ahead since the average PCT
thru-hiker spends far more hours on the trail in a year than the average
U.S. citizen spends in an automobile.

So yeah, I think it's totally fair to say that you're safer spending an hour
hiking on trail than spending an hour driving in car.  Of course, you'd be
safer still if you didn't do either of those things, but life is all about
acceptable risks, isn't it?

Eric

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