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Thanks Jack N for replying to yesterday’s post. I could just bung up a reply in the proper place, but as I haven’t posted today and don’t like waiting for it to get past the webmastery people, I’ll respond here, hope that’s OK.
Jack said:
Although I appreciate your interesting point, I can’t help but feel that it is undermined by the simple fact that a lot more people have driven cars over the many years since its invention, than participated in either of the world wars?
My response:
Firstly, it wasn’t my point. It was from Prof.Giddens. No idea where he got it from.
Secondly, I can see that some people might want to make some sort of a ratio measurement here - assess the chances/measure the relative risk with more accuracy etc, but actually, I think that misses the point. You could also argue that the death toll has occured over a much longer period of time if you wanted to go down that sort of route. I think the point of such a statistic is to bring home to us the raw, absolute cost; never mind the relative risk and the time period - it’s a heck of a lot of people however you look at it. Surely? Yes, fewer people were involved in frontline conflict in WW1 and 2 - although civilians were also targets in WW2 and it took place over 10 years. But to me, it seems like a useful and insightful calculation. It does seem like a very high cost.
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