xkcd #2940: Modes of Transportation

https://xkcd.com/2940

Explain xkcd #2940

Title Text:

My bold criticism might anger the hot air balloon people, which would be a real concern if any of them lived along a very narrow line directly upwind of me.

alt-text:

A chart that categorizes various modes of transportation based on their practicality and danger level:

Zone of Practicality:

  • Trains
  • Airliners
  • Boats
  • Walking
  • Cars
  • Scooters
  • Bicycles

Zone of Specialty and Recreational Vehicles:

  • Motorcycles
  • Helicopters
  • Light aircraft
  • Go karts
  • Skateboards
  • Rollerblades
  • Skis
  • Unicycles
  • Sleds
  • Bumper cars

???:

  • Hot air balloons

“Hot air balloons are the optimal mode of transportation, if your optimization algorithm has a sign error.”

  • snaggenEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    But per mile measurement for flying implies that every mile of a flight is equally dangerous, but the truth I’d that it is most dangerous to start or land, which is a per trip occurrence. The take off and landing is equally dangerous whether you travel a long or short distance in between.

    • NoRodent@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      It’s still a terrible metric to compare the safety of modes of transport and the Wiki article just below the table explains it well:

      The first two statistics are computed for typical travels by their respective forms of transport, so they cannot be used directly to compare risks related to different forms of transport in a particular travel “from A to B”. For example, these statistics suggest that a typical flight from Los Angeles to New York would carry a larger risk factor than a typical car travel from home to office. However, car travel from Los Angeles to New York would not be typical; that journey would be as long as several dozen typical car travels, and thus the associated risk would be larger as well. Because the journey would take a much longer time, the overall risk associated with making this journey by car would be higher than making the same journey by air, even if each individual hour of car travel is less risky than each hour of flight.

      If people made similar trips with cars as they do with airplanes, cars would lose in the per journey metric big time.

      • snaggenEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        Of course cars would loose if you tried to use it to travel across the Atlantic…

        • Electricblush@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          7 months ago

          If you are traveling across the Atlantic to get from Los Angeles to New York i would argue that you are traveling the wrong way…

    • Electricblush@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      7 months ago

      Yes, and?

      The point of distance is to take it into aggregate, for both modes of transport.

      This is in fact the exact point i am making.

      Per trip measurement implies that every trip (regardles of time or distance traveled) has equal danger.