On ChrisHallquist's post extolling the virtues of money, the top comment is Eliezer pointing out the lack of concrete examples. Can anyone think of any? This is not just hypothetical: if I think your suggestion is good, I will try it (and report back on how it went)
I care about health, improving personal skills (particularly: programming, writing, people skills), gaining respect (particularly at work), and entertainment (these days: primarily books and computer games). If you think I should care about something else, feel free to suggest it.
I am early-twenties programmer living in San Francisco. In the interest of getting advice useful to more than one person, I'll omit further personal details.
Budget: $50/day
If your idea requires significant ongoing time commitment, that is a major negative.
Morgan et all (2010) (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/10/699/) estimate 11.1 cyclist deaths per 100000 cyclist-km in London.
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate) estimates 8.5 road fatalities per 1 BILLION vehicle-km.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/sep/28/road-deaths-great-britain-data claims 125 motorcyclists died in road accidents for every billion miles travelled - the highest rate for all road users but also a year-on-year fall of 11%.
At 41 deaths per billion miles, the mortality rate for pedestrians was just above that of cyclists (35), with the former a year-on-year rise of 10% and the latter a fall of 6%.
Car occupants had by far the lowest mortality rate at four deaths per billion miles travelled.
7Nornagest
Mile for mile, biking is significantly more dangerous than taking a car (as is walking), though not as dangerous as riding a motorcycle. (See here, or here if you're willing to tolerate older data and worse formatting.) You're trading off for physical fitness, though, and the life expectancy gained from increased fitness -- especially if expressed in terms of QALYs -- generally outweighs that lost from increased accident risk.
This undoubtedly varies by location but I haven't been able to find any good data on how. The waters are also muddied a bit by the fact that bike advocacy organizations like to promulgate the life expectancy data without the accident data -- not that I can really blame them, statistical literacy being what it is.
On ChrisHallquist's post extolling the virtues of money, the top comment is Eliezer pointing out the lack of concrete examples. Can anyone think of any? This is not just hypothetical: if I think your suggestion is good, I will try it (and report back on how it went)
I care about health, improving personal skills (particularly: programming, writing, people skills), gaining respect (particularly at work), and entertainment (these days: primarily books and computer games). If you think I should care about something else, feel free to suggest it.
I am early-twenties programmer living in San Francisco. In the interest of getting advice useful to more than one person, I'll omit further personal details.
Budget: $50/day
If your idea requires significant ongoing time commitment, that is a major negative.