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army1987 comments on Is a Purely Rational World a Technologically Advanced World? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Interesting. I had always thought about cars being among the most dangerous things ever (them being the leading cause of death for people my age, sex and country), but I had never thought of looking at the flip side.
Another way to look at it: are they more dangerous than horseback riding?
A lot of people who used horse-powered travel in the late 19th century used carriages and the like. Taxis with horses were pretty common. So a direct comparison to the dangers of horseback riding may be not called for. On the other hand, horses also created a highly unsanitary environment due to horse excrement and urine. I don't know how much that impacted disease substantially. I'd expect it not to have that large an impact, but I'm not sure even what the first steps would be in making an estimate for that.
Correlating recorded disease rates with recorded horses per capita would be a place to start, though of course there are many confounding factors.
Probably. On the other hand, it'd be quite impractical for most people in a several-million-inhabitant city to have a horse.