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FrameBenignly comments on Wear a Helmet While Driving a Car - Less Wrong Discussion

47 Post author: James_Miller 30 July 2015 04:36PM

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Comment author: FrameBenignly 02 August 2015 03:02:53PM 0 points [-]

Well, to use the numbers given, if P(death) when you don't wear a seatbelt equals 1 and P(death) when you do equals 0.55, and 53 people die not wearing a seatbelt and 47 die wearing one, then 1 x A1 = 53 and 0.55 x A2 = 47. A1=53 and A2=85.45. A2/(A1+A2) = 0.617. So 62% of people are wearing a seatbelt at any given time.

I'm assuming they're calcing the two figures given the same methods which is not a given. They might be using real world figures for the former statistics and car crash simulator numbers for the latter statistics which would make more sense but throw my calculation off. 62% seems low to me.

Comment author: Houshalter 03 August 2015 06:12:58AM 0 points [-]

I am certain that the P(death|~seat belt) != 1.

Comment author: FrameBenignly 03 August 2015 06:43:05AM 1 point [-]

That's irrelevant. As long as the ratio of seatbelt to not seatbelt is 55/100, you'll end up with the same answer. ~seatbelt could be 0.1 or 0.03 or 0.00007.