Posted by Eugene Volokh: How Dangerous Are Various Recreational Activities? http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_02_12-2006_02_18.shtml#1140198176
Vice President Cheney's hunting accident led me to wonder -- how dangerous (to humans) is hunting, compared to other recreational activities? Here are some statistics from the 1999 edition of National Safety Council's Injury Facts: Sport Fatalities Injuries Hunting 92 880 Swimming 1500 not specified Recreational boating 821 4555 Parachuting 47 not specified Skiing and snowboarding 26 (22 skiing and 4 snowboarding) not specified Football 7 334,420 Note that all the numbers (especially the injuries) probably involve some underreporting, so these are just rough cuts. The numbers also aren't normalized by the number of participants; for instance, hunting, swimming, and boating, for instance, are much more popular than parachuting, so parachuting may well have a higher fatality-per-participant (or fatality-per-episode) rate than those other activities. I used the 1999 edition because that's the one on my shelf; I'll see if I can get some more recent numbers, and perhaps ones that cover more kinds of sports. _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
