.
I do often belittle terrorists as less dangerous than tired bus drivers.
Well, it's about time to back it up. Here is a statistics brochure of the German bus companies association. They're obviously the last to exaggerate the lethality of bus drivers. They used an official statistic anyway.
Kills by bus drivers (or as the association calls it; deaths in accidents in which buses were the main culprit) in Germany:
| Year | Kills by bus drivers | |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 42 | |
| 2002 | 34 | |
| 2003 | 30 | |
| 2004 | 31 | |
| 2005 | 28 | |
| 2006 | 20 | |
| 2007 | 31 |
Total kills by bus drivers in seven years (newer statistics not available, but enough bus kills in the news): 216
Total kills of Germans by terrorists in the same period: Honestly, I gave up searching for the statistic after an hour. There are apparently no statistics for such small figures, at least none that are easily found. The figure should be about three dozens for the whole period if I remember correctly (combat KIA in AFG don't count, it's simply not terror to attack foreign armed soldiers when they're in uniform in a war zone - and these losses are kind of self-inflicted because we sent troops to AFG voluntarily).
This contrast doesn't mean much, as both problems are being suppressed with a certain amount of effort each and the efficiency of additional effort (~less dead per million spent) is as unknown as the efficiency of the last effort (how large a fraction of a life was saved by the last million spent on countermeasures?).
It does nevertheless explain why Germans don't tend to get excited about the terror "threat". Terrorists are pretty much not noticeable and irrelevant. Incompetent loud-mouths.
Sven Ortmann
P.S.: I'm sorry bus drivers, comparing you to terrorists was obviously very close to an insult on your competence and intellect. Some group had to be compared to state the point.
edit: I forgot.
We need to declare the WOBRD! War on bus-related deaths!
A couple billion bucks for security personnel and technical gadgets will do the trick.
Every new accident will tell us about a security gap that needs to be fixed.
We need to FEAR the terrible accidents.
Report him if you see someone who might look like a bus driver!
Global wire-tapping will help us to identify bus drivers with psychical problems or even bus drivers who drink a beer at dinner!
And since we're at it, let's raid bus stations, too. They're not exactly related to bus accidents, but they sound so similar. We will of course not just raid the bus stations, but in fact we need to station policemen there for - well, some pundits on TeeVee will tell us when we can recall them.
.
edit: I forgot.
We need to declare the WOBRD! War on bus-related deaths!
A couple billion bucks for security personnel and technical gadgets will do the trick.
Every new accident will tell us about a security gap that needs to be fixed.
We need to FEAR the terrible accidents.
Report him if you see someone who might look like a bus driver!
Global wire-tapping will help us to identify bus drivers with psychical problems or even bus drivers who drink a beer at dinner!
And since we're at it, let's raid bus stations, too. They're not exactly related to bus accidents, but they sound so similar. We will of course not just raid the bus stations, but in fact we need to station policemen there for - well, some pundits on TeeVee will tell us when we can recall them.
Of course the fact that the people that killed almost 3000 people on 9/11 were planning their actions in Hamburg means nothing to you.
ReplyDeleteFew of the victims were Germans, so it's somebody else's problem.
What's that famous quote from Martin Niemöller about apathy?
It means less than that they learned to fly in Florida (with a conspicuous disinterest in landing procedures!).
ReplyDeleteWe need to look at the lethality of U.S. bus drivers for comparison if we'd consider terror deaths in the U.S..
Likewise, we need to consider Indian bus driver lethality if we consider Naxalite lethality and the Mumbai raid.
You need to get the point of the text to understand that, of course.
we consider Naxalite lethality and the Mumbai raid. Not to mention the Bhopal lethality.
ReplyDeleteyou would also need to take into account the positive effects of bus drivers.
ReplyDeleteThe emergency services running red lights kill loads of people, but thay save even more still
I don't propose to round them up. I referenced their relative dangerousness as a group of people.
ReplyDeleteSomehow it looks as if you didn't get my point. I could do the same with lightning strikes, bathtubs, ladders, trains, cigarettes and many other killers which are more lethal than terrorists.
Strangely, nobody seems to freak out about them and throw billions of bucks at supposed countermeasures to the 'threat'.
Invading and reforming tobacco-producing countries would make a thousand times more sense than invading Iraq did.
Terrorists are a smallish nuisance at most.