I should add an important note to the last post.

Take all those numbers with a grain of salt, as they also reflect, to a certain extent, how we spend our time. We drive more than we walk, we walk more than we ride our bikes, and we ride our bikes more than we light off fireworks.

If we celebrated every Sunday with fireworks, you can bet that the risk of dying from them would be a lot higher.

You also have to adjust for age. I am less likely to die from falling than someone 60 years older than me, both because I am less likely to fall and also because I'm not as vulnerable to the complications that result from it. Conversely, I am more likely to die from drowning than a 90-year old, because (I'm guessing) I'm probably swimming more often.

The overall point is that we are not very rational about risk. Take me. I am unnaturally scared of spiders and bees. I wouldn't call it a phobia, but I just really don't like them. The odds of me dying from a venomous spider is 29 million to 1, and from bees or hornets it's 3.6 million to 1. It's clearly not rational, and yet–there it is.