How Safe Am I In My Own Home, On The Street, At Work?

Switch on your television, pop on the radio, or open any newspaper, and you’ll be confronted with a plethora of horrifying images of war, murder, genocide, death, disease and terrorist atrocities, many of which are abroad, some of which occur in your own country, and a few even happen “just down the road”. Which begs the question – “how safe am I?”

Well, safer than you think. According to the Office of National Statistics, the odds on a western citizen being involved in a terrorist attack is 1:20,000,000 (one in twenty million), the odds of being murdered is 1:400,000 (one in four hundred thousand), and the chance you’ll be a serial killer’s next victim is 1:98,000,000 (one in ninety-eight million), with the odds of winning the national lottery being 1:14,000,000 - I know which one I'd prefer. 

In 2015, in the United Kingdom, roughly 300 people (out of a population of 64 million) were murdered, a figure that year-on-year is steadily falling, with the vast majority of murders not being premeditated, often involving alcohol or drugs, and – if you are a sex-worker - you are forty-two times more likely to be killed than anyone else. So, how safe are you? Well, very safe.

With these odds, you might live forever, just as long as you don’t go outside, go to work, take a shower, drink any water, eat any food, or breathe any air… the result of which will kill you. Life is a very dangerous pursuit, by simply being awake we take our lives in our hands. But how dangerous is life? Very… if you’re not careful.

What follows is a list of statistics on the most likely ways that the average human being will die (which I hope will dispel any ridiculous notions that, just because the news is full of horrible stories, that we should all “stay in, to stay safe”). The top three are of course:
#1 - 1:3 Odds on dying from cancer, diabetes or heart/lung-disease
#2 - 1:4 Odds on dying by hereditary illness, communicable disease or bad nutrition
#3 - Odds increased by an additional 1:10 of dying by #1 is you smoke tobacco

All of which we can do something about, but – more often than not – we choose not to. To be honest there’s a wealth of unremarkable ways (courtesy of the National Safety Council) that the average person dies every year, and almost all of them are entirely preventable:

• Odds of 1:7399 – Dying of Hypothermia (not occurring, as you might think in frozen wastes of the Arctic tundra, but within a single mile of our own homes, having not dressed appropriately for the weather or sea).
• 1:6174 – Dying of Heatstroke (as above, lack of sunscreen, hat or shade can result in your skin's inability to effectively cool your core body temperature down, which kills you).
• 1:6115 – Falling from a building (and yet the odds of dying by parachute jump being 1:100,586, puts into context how dangerous simple jobs like window-cleaning can be).
• 1:5981 (USA) or 1:47800 (UK) – Being accidentally shot, with the odds on dying by deliberate shooting (in the USA) being just 1:300. 
• 1:5682 – Air/Space travel (including civil, military and commercial, meaning that statistically with the odds of dying in a car crash being 1:272, it’s 21 times safer to fly, than to go by road, although if you’re still worried, travel by rail, the odds of dying are 1:225,879)
• 1:4404 – Choking on food… so remember to chew.
• 1:4238 – Falling out of a bed/chair… yes you read that right (mostly in the over 65’s).
• 1:4147 – Bicycle accident… decreased if you don’t run a red-light or wear a helmet
• 1:1523 – Medical complications… although most people die NOT getting medical help
• 1:1235 – Flames/Fire/Smoke… get smoke alarms as inhalation can kill in just 3 minutes
• 1:1073 - Drowning… learn to swim, it’s good fun
• 1:802 – Motorbike accident… the vast majority by reckless driving, excessive speed and bad maintenance
• 1:623 – Walking across a busy street… so, “look left, look right, and cross carefully”
• 1:289 – Drug addiction… yes drugs like heroin and cocaine are bad for you, but you are more likely to die by misuse of prescription painkillers or sleeping pills, than any other drugs, including alcohol.
• 1:272 – Car accident… with teenagers accounting for a whopping 30% of these deaths
• 1:184 – Falling, tripping or slipping… of any kind
• 1:139 – Accidental drug overdose or poisoning… so, always read the label
• 1:115 – Self-harm… a person attempts suicide every 15 minutes in the UK,
• 1:85 – Any land vehicle (cars, bikes, trucks, off-road, etc, all combined)

With, as we’ve seen, the top three odds being 1:28 Stroke, 1:7 Cancer and 1:6 Heart Disease. But that’s not the complete list. Of course there’s Malaria which kills 800,000 people per year, natural phenomenons (tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc) which kill 150,000 each year, as well as:

• Being struck by lightning – 24000 deaths annually
• Hippo attack – 2900 deaths annually
• Auto-erotic-asphyxiation – 1000+ deaths annually
• Scalded by tap water – 355 deaths in the USA alone
• Cow stampeed – 157 deaths annually
• Falling coconuts – 150 deaths annually
• Falling icicles – 46 deaths annually
• Champagne corks – 24 deaths annually
• Death by vending machine – 2.18 deaths per year

And, then there’s being left-handed – although this can’t be statistically proven, it is said that 2500 left-handers are killed each years using products designed for right-handers, but it is tru that left-handers are five times more likely to die in an accident.

But even that doesn’t cover the really dangerous pursuits in life, including: snowboarding with the odds on dying being 1:2million, skiing 1:1.4m, swimming 1:1m, running 1:1m, bungee-jumping 1:500,000, cycling 1:140,000, sky-diving 1:100,000, scuba-diving 1:34000, boxing 1:2200, hand-gliding 1:560, Grand Prix racing 1:100, and base-jumping 1:60.

​And neither does it cover some of the real oddities, such as: death by computer game 1:100million, death by nuclear explosion 1:10million, drowning in your own bath 1:685,000, an earthquake 153,587, an accident at work 1:43500, and… having a dinner party, the odds of you dying is 1:100,000 (including alcohol/food poisoning, accident, electrocution and drowning).

So, how safe are you, really? As safe as you want to be. But you’ll be no safer, sitting inside your own home, watching the news, and worrying about all the horrible things which could – but probably won’t – kill you. Instead... book a ticket to Murder Mile Walks. Hoorah!

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Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten quirky & unusual things to do in London” and featuring 18 murderers, 3 serial killers, across 21 locations, totalling 75 deaths, over just a one mile walk.