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Originally Posted by mcguire
1960 fatalities per 1000 miles: 50 (infoplease.com)
2000 fatalities per 1000 miles: 15
Yours desperately in need of a research librarian,
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I think you're in desperate need of someone to give your factoids a reality check. 50 fatalities per 1000 miles? Or even 15? I'm not going to believe either of those.
The NTSA estimates "1.09 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles" here:
Traffic Fatalities in 2010 Drop to Lowest Level in Recorded History | National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) But of course this is not an entirely relevant statistic, because (as others point out) crash rates have decreased due to all sorts of factors like drunk driving enforcement, different numbers of people in the car, etc. If you were really interested, you'd have to find a statistic on fatalities per crash. And even that wouldn't be a real answer.
In any case, you're quite missing my point, which was that large numbers of people didn't die in auto accidents in 1960, and don't now. Though vehicles are safer, the cars of those days were by no means "deathtraps", and many supposed safety improvements have yielded marginal increases while imposing considerable weight, fuel economy, & driveability penalties which IMHO aren't worth the cost.
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Actually, as I recall, most of the "extreme sports" are very safe. You want a dangerous sport, try horseback riding.
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Been there, done that. The bay in the foreground's mine. (Another instance of my reverse Beauty & the Beast syndrome: without ever intending to do so, I somehow manage to wind up sharing my life with absolutely gorgeous animals. Too bad it doesn't seem to work with human females :-()