Who’s more dangerous: sober drivers or drunk pedestrians?

[darklordoftech]

?

[dead0man]

drunk pedestrians, not close

[Antonio the Sixth]

The ones who control a giant hulking metal box capable of rapid speed, obviously. How is this even a question.

This is like asking if a toddler is more dangerous than a 25-year-old heavyweight boxing champion. Regardless of what you think of their relative cognitive faculties, there's an objective physical reality at play.

[darklordoftech]

The ones who control a giant hulking metal box capable of rapid speed, obviously. How is this even a question.

This is like asking if a toddler is more dangerous than a 25-year-old heavyweight boxing champion. Regardless of what you think of their relative cognitive faculties, there's an objective physical reality at play.

Agreed, but I want to see what others think.

[Rand]

Option 3...malfunctioning Teslas.

[dead0man]

The ones who control a giant hulking metal box capable of rapid speed, obviously. How is this even a question.

This is like asking if a toddler is more dangerous than a 25-year-old heavyweight boxing champion. Regardless of what you think of their relative cognitive faculties, there's an objective physical reality at play.

if you're walking down the street and a sober driver drives past you, 99.999998% of the time you'll be fine.  If you're walking down the street and a drunk walks past you, 84% of the time you'll be fine, 14% of the time you'll be moderately annoyed and 2% something worse will happen.

If your kids have to walk to school, would you rather have them walk on the sidewalk while 25 cars drive by (helmed by 100% sober drivers) or walk to school past 25 drunk random people?

[wnwnwn]

Drunk pedestrians do riskier things, but they usually end up hurting themselves.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The ones who control a giant hulking metal box capable of rapid speed, obviously. How is this even a question.

This is like asking if a toddler is more dangerous than a 25-year-old heavyweight boxing champion. Regardless of what you think of their relative cognitive faculties, there's an objective physical reality at play.

if you're walking down the street and a sober driver drives past you, 99.999998% of the time you'll be fine.  If you're walking down the street and a drunk walks past you, 84% of the time you'll be fine, 14% of the time you'll be moderately annoyed and 2% something worse will happen.

If your kids have to walk to school, would you rather have them walk on the sidewalk while 25 cars drive by (helmed by 100% sober drivers) or walk to school past 25 drunk random people?

I would be very surprised if the accident rate for sober drivers was really as low as 0.000002%. There's plenty of reasons drivers f**k up aside from being drunk. Anyway, obviously in a one-on-one encounter I might prefer not to interact with the drunk pedestrian, since yeah, they are more likely to be a nuisance all considered. But if you think who's more likely to cause serious bodily injury or death, then I'm pretty sure the numbers look a lot worse for a driver even sober.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There are other reasons why a driver can be dangerous than a lack of sobriety (including all Substances here, not just booze). But there is a bit of a gender issue as far as drunk pedestrians go, that probably should be noted: for most men, no, very little to worry about. For most women though, hmm. It is very easy, as a man, to forget quite how much larger most men are than most women: a physically fit and strong man of about six foot will usually weigh somewhere in the region (give or take a few either way) of 100kgs. Rather a lot of women weigh about half that.

[Rand]

Option 3...malfunctioning Teslas.

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1734922419024896040?s=46

TOLD YA

[Del Tachi]

The ones who control a giant hulking metal box capable of rapid speed, obviously. How is this even a question.

This is like asking if a toddler is more dangerous than a 25-year-old heavyweight boxing champion. Regardless of what you think of their relative cognitive faculties, there's an objective physical reality at play.

if you're walking down the street and a sober driver drives past you, 99.999998% of the time you'll be fine.  If you're walking down the street and a drunk walks past you, 84% of the time you'll be fine, 14% of the time you'll be moderately annoyed and 2% something worse will happen.

If your kids have to walk to school, would you rather have them walk on the sidewalk while 25 cars drive by (helmed by 100% sober drivers) or walk to school past 25 drunk random people?

I would be very surprised if the accident rate for sober drivers was really as low as 0.000002%. There's plenty of reasons drivers f**k up aside from being drunk. Anyway, obviously in a one-on-one encounter I might prefer not to interact with the drunk pedestrian, since yeah, they are more likely to be a nuisance all considered. But if you think who's more likely to cause serious bodily injury or death, then I'm pretty sure the numbers look a lot worse for a driver even sober.

Drunk driving is implicated in something like 30-35% of all traffic fatalities.  Categorically remove incidents involving alcohol and the traffic fatality rate for the U.S. falls to about 10 per 100,000 (~0.0001%).

There were 16.5 violent crimes per 1,000 Americans in 2021.  So you're much likelier to be a victim of a violent crime, of which alcohol is a major contributing factor, than be killed by a drunk (much less sober!) driver.

[First1There]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year

42,000 motor vehicle deaths in 2021 and 2022, separately. If one third are caused by alcohol then two thirds are not, so 28,000 deaths in each year caused by sober drivers.

How many people are killed by drunk pedestrians? Is it more than 28,000? Can you prove it? Considering that there weren't even that many murders last year, I don't think you can.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported-murder-and-nonnegligent-manslaughter-cases-in-the-us-since-1990/

[dead0man]

1.there are other ways to be non-sober than being drunk
2.of course there are more driving related deaths than deaths due to run ins with random drunks because we spend about 10,000 times more time driving, riding and crossing the street than we do running in to random drunks.  Way more people die from dogs than from bears, which is more dangerous?
3.yes, when you exist where the cars go, your odds of having a negative interaction with a car are higher.  What percentage of our lives do we spend existing where cares go?  5%?  If you're sitting in your living room, on your front porch, walking down the sidewalk, shopping, watching a movie or any of the other things humans are doing 95% of the their time, you are far more likely to have a negative interaction with a drunk than with a car driven by a sober person.