"Jeff" wrote in message
news
I have trouble following your logic, and where did you get those
numbers???

here's a good source:
http://www.uscgboating.org/statistic...dent_stats.htm

same source, excepting a correction in sailboat numbers for those
states which don't require sailboats and auxiliary sailboats to be
registers. *However* serious finger trouble on my part and lack of
double checking changed 4% into 40%!

-------------------------------------------
Boats (12,000,000 - of which sail and Aux sail 40%)

12 million boats are registered, but only about 140,000 see
below, or 1.2% are auxiliary sail, with slightly over have
being outboards. I don't know how you could think 40% of all
boats are sail!

Agreed. I was looking in 2002 for comparable figures in aviation
and vehicles as well. In 2002 the CG recorded 216,657 auxiliary
sailboats and 123,772 sail boats (340,429 - 2.5% of the total
fleet) with possibly a further 50,000 from states which did not
require registration of these vessels, but required power only
registration. I know - 3%. Good thing you were there to check!

Deaths pa 800 (5 times as many injuries)
The death rate has dropped about to 700 or less for 4 of the
last 5 years, there has been a significant trend towards safety
in recent years.

Agreed. The year I was looking at 5,705 accidents, 4,062 injuries
and 750 fatalities.

0.25 per 100,000 of population

Assuming you've 300,000,000 people living in US

7 per 100,000 boats

5.77 to be exact. I was doing back of the envelope comparisons
between different transport modes, and 20% error either way made
no difference to the argument.

2.8 per 10,000,000 hours (heroic assumption; 250hrs per boat
pa)
This has to be hugely overstated, but what's the point?

However: sailboats are only 1% of deaths.

Sorry, 1.5%, but with only 11 deaths the percentage assumption is
weak.

Sailboat related deaths occur in almost exactly the same
proportion as their numbers in the registered fleet. They
probably are statistically safer if you could include all of the
unregistered human powered vehicles (which also includes some
sailboats) since canoes and kayaks are a major source of
fatalities.

Broadly agreed. We had been selecting different elements of the
stats for different purposes, and on my game sailboats plus
auxiliary sailboats had roughly half the death rate (hangs head in
shame about bogus 40%).

Very much agree with all your other (snipped) comments. It's good
to see a rational discussion with bad assumptions/statements being
corrected like this.

The point of my original quotation of rates per 100,000 etc was to
show the following(now corrected!)
-------------------------------------
Cars. (number not known by me)

38,000 deaths pa, (10 times as many injuries).
15 per 100,000 population (UK, about 7/100,000)
1.5 per 100,000,000 miles
4.5 per 10,000,000 hours

Source: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/
--------------------------------------
Boats (12,000,000)

Deaths pa 750 (5 times as many injuries), 5000 accidents
0.25 deaths per 100,000 of population
6 deaths per 100,000 boats
2.8 deaths per 10,000,000 boating hours (heroic assumption; 250hrs
per boat pa)

Source:
http://www.uscgboating.org/statistic...stics_2002.pdf
---------------------------------------
General Aviation (220,000 aircraft, 30,000,000 hours flown)

Deaths pa 600 (1,800 accidents)
0.2 deaths per 100,000 population
270 deaths per 100,000 aircraft
200 deaths per 10,000,000 flying hours

Source: http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2004/ARG0401.pdf
----------------------------------------------

The idea was to put some factual scale into rants about relative
safety of different leisure occupations.

Apologies to those who've been bored by these tables before.
They're more accurate now.
--
JimB
http://www.jimbaerselman.f2s.com/
Describing some Greek and Spanish cruising areas