I heard the car is the deadliest weapon created by humans and that the number of lives it has claimed exceeds the death toll from atomic weapons, guns or bombing. Is this true? And what are the grisly figures involved?
鈥� First, we have to assume that this comparison sets automotive fatalities against all uses of weaponry, including acts of war. If that is the case, weapons win hands down.
This is for a number of reasons, the first being that, unlike weapons, the automobile was not designed with efficiency of death in mind: most road deaths are accidental. Furthermore, while spears, guns and explosives have been available for centuries, automobiles have only been around for about 120 years. They have only been in mass production for 100 years and accessible to most of the world鈥檚 population for 60 years.
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So what are the numbers? On the roads of the US there has been an average of between 40,000 and 50,000 fatalities annually since 1970. If I were to extrapolate those numbers over 100 years (which would be to claim 50,000 died in years when there were barely 50,000 autos in the US), then double the numbers again to try to include Europe, Russia, Japan and Australia, I would come up with slightly more than 10 million fatalities over the century.
鈥淥n the roads of the US there has been an average of between 40,000 and 50,000 fatalities annually鈥�
In contrast, during the second world war alone, combat deaths have been estimated at around 20 million. Civilian deaths by weaponry 鈥� including bombing and atomic bombs, but excluding the Holocaust, famine and other events 鈥� could probably total 20 million. I would argue that, unless millions of fatalities in remote lands have gone unreported, the allegation incriminating the car is unfair.
However, excluding warfare from the calculation would at least create a debate. Firearm deaths in the US in 1999 totalled 28,874, of which more than 16,500 were suicides, 10,800 murders and the rest accidental or undetermined. According to the , motor vehicle deaths in that year totalled 42,401.
Alexander D. Mitchell, Baltimore, Maryland, US
鈥� Although the statement concerning the relative lethality of motoring compared with warfare is a canard, like some myths it does have a kernel of truth. It originated during the 1980s in revisionist historical reassessments of the US involvement in the , when it was claimed that more young men were killed each year on American roads than died fighting in the jungles of south-east Asia.
In fact, during a decade of fighting, losses by the US armed forces totalled 47,378 鈥� more than the average of 45,000 people killed each year in automobile accidents on American roads during the mid-sixties. Ironically, most of the 10,824 non-combat fatalities that US forces suffered in the conflict have been attributed to some kind of vehicular accident. Moreover, the highest casualty rate in both Vietnam and on the roads occurred in the same group: men in their late teens and early twenties. So from a revisionist perspective, going to war was almost 10 times as safe as driving a car.
Even if there were a basis for comparison, the Vietnam casualty factor was quite specific to the US armed forces. For example, the total death toll inflicted on the indigenous population 鈥� civilian, military or insurgent 鈥� during the Vietnam war was between 12 and 13 per cent which, had the US population suffered proportional casualties, would have left 28 million Americans dead.
Hadrian Jeffs, Norwich, UK
鈥� The table fork is by far the deadliest weapon created by humans. Each year, this humble utensil abets the deaths of millions of people by conveying into their bodies all kinds of fatty foodstuffs known to cause heart attacks, cancers, strokes, diabetes and other diseases. According to the , approximately 17.5 million people died of cardiovascular disease alone in 2005, making up 30 per cent of all deaths globally.
As most of these harmful foods are of animal origin, and because the question doesn鈥檛 specify human lives claimed, we might also add the number of animals killed to be eaten with forks to the yearly death toll. This amounts to about 56 billion, says .
Jonathan Balcombe, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Washington DC, US
鈥� According to several research studies, the US death rate due to medical misadventure is around 225,000 deaths per year, made up of 12,000 deaths due to unnecessary surgery, 7000 from medication errors in hospitals, 20,000 caused by other errors in hospitals, 80,000 fatalities from infections in hospitals and 106,000 deaths due to the negative effects of drugs. So arguably the most lethal invention is in fact a doctor.
Jeremy Ardley, Perth, Western Australia