all 79 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 82 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (20 children)

I'm sure most people are aware that the difference in danger is quite large but maybe not just how absurdly large.

Sharks kill about 10 people per year.

For cars the number is 1,670,000 deaths. Every year.

As a point of comparison, in 2025, about 250k people were killed in armed conflicts, which was the highest number in decades.

A lot of people think it's weird to hate cars as much as I do. But they are quantitatively in a similar category as the Holocaust in terms of how many people they kill. From the perspective, it seems a bit crazy not to hate them.

Sources: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267 https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/shark-attacks/yearly-worldwide-summary/ https://www.npr.org/2026/06/09/nx-s1-5850355/data-highest-conflicts-iran-israel-ukraine-russia-world-war-ii

  • source
  • hideshow 20 child comments
  • [–] [S] 21 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Also, in both cases many more are killed by humans than the other way around.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I am somewhat disturbed by how right you are about this. Car sales estimates are 90-100 million new cars per year, so assuming we're not putting 99 million new cars on the road every year, we're destroying a lot more than we're making. I'm not even gonna look at the numbers for sharks cuz I know it'll make me big sad.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    One thing I learned in my journey to power a home and drive an electric car is that automobiles, even small "slow" cars, are thr most powerful thing that most people ever personally own. A firearm will accelerate a 7.5 gram projectile up to 425 meters per second. But my car will accelrate 1600 kg up to 44 meters per second and I can just take it wherever I want. I could even get a larger, faster one if I wanted and nobody would care.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Unfortunately, evil people are starting to realize that heavy machinery is a far more deadly weapon than firearms in untrained hands. Guns may be for killing, but their chief merit is that they are designed to be reusable and at range, intended to encourage trained soldiers to fight in relative safety for many days.

    The people taking cars and ramming into parades? They don't want to live, so they can use an extremely powerful weapon, no skill required. And this tool is everywhere, just barely regulated.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago*

    This is an important issue. People get upset when I bring this up because usually they're angry and they want to punish someone after these events, so they want to make it about immigrants, or fascists, or terrorists or whoever. But those people exist and frankly you are not going to get rid of them without doing something even worse than what they did.

    The proper solution is to ensure that there is always physical separation between large groups of pedestrians and cars so that these ramming attacks simply cannot take place. Some well-placed bollards are all it takes.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    While I don't disagree much, let's not be silly. The numbers need to be divided by hours of exposure.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    I think both metrics would tell you different things. Even unadjusted it gives you an idea about which thing you should be concerned about addressing and reducing your own risk or the risk of those you care about.

    Plus, I don't have exposure data like that to make the comparison. If you do then it would certainly be interesting to see.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    This was exactly my thought. Like I grew up by the ocean where lots of people swam and there were sharks. Did car deaths outnumber shark deaths? Of course. Was it 6 orders of magnitude as much? Not even close lmao.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Stephen King wrote this book and it was made into a movie and a Futurama episode.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Y'know, I think I could believe that cars kill more people than sharks even at sea.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Hippos kill a lot more people than sharks.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] [S] 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    I'm frankly surprised that hippos kill ANY sharks tbh 🀷🏻

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I'm not. IIRC they're technically herbivores, they just really fuckin' hate other creatures for some reason

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] [S] 8 points 2 months ago*

    Nah, they're just very territorial, protective of their young, and deceptively fast. Long as you steer clear, it's not like they're going to stalk you for several miles to kill you like a tiger might 🀷🏻

    Last I checked, there's very little territorial overlap between hippos and sharks πŸ˜„

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] [S] 9 points 2 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    The person in the trunk? A card shark

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    The fish seeing to their injuries? A nurse shark

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    The shark circling the altruistic fish? A cat in disguise.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    The weirdo trying and failing spectacularly to go "pspspspsps" underwater? Me

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I was just at an aquarium the other day joking that jaws would be a very different movie if you swapped out the shark design for, say, an epaulette shark. Would look too goofy to take seriously.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago
    [–] 14 points 2 months ago
    [–] 6 points 2 months ago* (5 children)

    sharks play into man's fear of nature, and regardless of the reality of shark attacks, the plot is going to seem reasonable. man can't control nature. oohhh, scary.

    a killer car film is generally going to require some supernatural element and then be accused of being 'schlocky' or 'so bad it's good,' like in this thread. if you're killed by a car, most people would consider it someone's fault--either the pedestrian or one of the drivers, and an 80 year old with poor eyesight doesn't make for a good horror film.

    i guess you could make some silly a24 'arthouse' film called 'the passenger.' it would be about a sane passenger in a car driven by an increasingly reckless driver that builds up to a life-altering crash. it could answer questions about 'why didn't they just ask to be let out?'

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    I kind of think car crashes could fit pretty well into my horror movie idea, Sanewashing; in which an amateur serial killer is clumsily killing people, but an overbearing sense of β€œnormalcy” is preventing people from panicking or investigating, just viewing the deaths as tragedies rather than mysteries.

    Something that could be thematic is to just have someone hear about a friend being killed, and be completely on edge; but then hear it was a car crash, and all tension releases.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Christine (1983) rolls into the room.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Did anyone else think this was going to be cows? (more people are killed by cattle each year than by shark attacks)

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    It's called Maximum Overdrive.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Gonna need a bigger car…

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    That car is way too cute. They usually come in XXL.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    Jaws theme but all you hear is a rattly bass and the windows close to breaking

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    Pretty sure they made that movie a few times.

    Plus, there's that tire documentary called Rubber.

  • source
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    Compared to shark attacks, more than 1,000 times the number of people each year choke to death. Now THAT'S a movie I'd watch!

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Mosquitoes.

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    So it makes sense. In the Cars universe, everything seems to be build for human, but perhaps sentient cars started to kill off everyone and then live in that world.

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Revenge of the Street Fighter bonus stage

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmXbHsXS6Tc

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    moose jaws!!!

  • source
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    Which boot you referring to?

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] [S] 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    The boot (trunk) of the car.

    Also, there's a double entendre since "boot" is also German for boat. Triple if you find a way of making Das Boot relevant to the comic 🀷🏻

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    I remember a book about a killer car. Don't know if there was a movie.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    There's a few of them but they're pretty schlocky. Christine is probably the best known one. There is also Duel, The Car, and maximum overdrive are the classics. Wheels of Terror was one I watched and tbh it wasn't bad enough to go over to the "so bad it's good" camp.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • 14 comments in c/fuckcars@lemmy.world view that post
    5 comments in c/fuck_cars@lemmy.ml view that post
    2 comments in c/fuckcars@lemmy.ca view that post