xkcd #2940: Modes of Transportation
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.”
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.
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:
If people made similar trips with cars as they do with airplanes, cars would lose in the per journey metric big time.
Of course cars would loose if you tried to use it to travel across the Atlantic...
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...