xkcd #2940: Modes of Transportation
Title Text:
My bold criticism might anger the hot air balloon people, which would be a real concern if any of them lived along a very narrow line directly upwind of me.
alt-text:
A chart that categorizes various modes of transportation based on their practicality and danger level:
Zone of Practicality:
- Trains
- Airliners
- Boats
- Walking
- Cars
- Scooters
- Bicycles
Zone of Specialty and Recreational Vehicles:
- Motorcycles
- Helicopters
- Light aircraft
- Go karts
- Skateboards
- Rollerblades
- Skis
- Unicycles
- Sleds
- Bumper cars
???:
- Hot air balloons
“Hot air balloons are the optimal mode of transportation, if your optimization algorithm has a sign error.”
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where to put my 3 favorites? hovercraft, monorail and blimp
Those first two are incredibly fit for some niche that is so small that nobody even remembers it exists.
The last one is still more practical than hot air balloons.
I watched a documentary once about the dangers of monorails. The conductor had possums in the wiring. He called the big one Bitey.
What about pogo sticks?
Hot air balloons are a very useful mode of transportation if your goal is to take aerial photographs from them (although admittedly nowadays you could also use drones). It’s always a question of what you want to achieve.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aerial_photographs_from_hot_air_balloons
Interesting, that’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a personal photo album on Wikipedia.
It is Wikimedia Commons, not Wikipedia. That is where most of the images used on Wikipedia and other WMF projects are stored. It has categories for nearly everything under the sun.
This is wildly dependent on infrastructure. Both for the convenience and danger axis.
But hardly for hot air balloons
Yeah, the joke and alt text are delivered quite nicely.
motorcycles should 100% be in the zone of practicality, especially with modern sleek electric ones.
skateboards should be the bridge between practical and recreational, provided you have sensible infrastructure and short distances they have distinct benefits.
skis and sleds just need snow to make sense
I think the existence of car drivers increases their danger level massively
sure but that applies to everything, if you want to be safe then the only time you should ever be on a road is inside a bus.
Apparently alcohol as well as it is involved in something like 50% of motorcycle fatalities.
it annoys me to no end how motorcycles and mopeds are viewed as dangerous, when every single time you hear about people being hurt on them it’s because they’re fucking idiots who tried to do a backflip infront of a semitruck
Horses are technically more dangerous to ride than motorcycles. It’s just that motorcycles attract a kind of people who like doing backflips in front of a semi truck.
I’m here to say that if there’s snow, skis win on practicality. Almost every winter, there’s at least one day when you will have some people skiing to work in Oslo, a city of 700 000 inhabitants, with a metro system. Because when there’s 10 cm of snow in the streets, skis are the quickest and easiest way to get anywhere.
You can be a skilled rider and still and a fall. More likely is that an unsafe car driver will do something that causes an accident.
I’m not sure I agree that unicycles are safer than roller blades. But that’s probably because I am comfortable on roller blades and don’t know how to unicycle, so for me, the opposite is true.
Trains and planes and others are a bit wonky for this chart. If I needed to take get to work, train and plane immediately resort to walking the entire way (unless get in a car, on a bike, fall just after). So while traveling across the country for a trip may be convenient on a train… Wait, unless I only have the weekend or a short work trip/vacation, because then it would take to much time and be inconvenient. Tried to find an example. Travel to Las Vegas from Nashville. Plane, ~3 hour flight plus let’s say 2 hour travel and airport bs. So 5 hours there, 5 back. Driving: 26 hours (each way). Walking: Death by dehydration in desert. Train: not even listed as there was no routes.
As both an extreme unicyclist & rollerblader, unicycles are actually incredibly safe. More safe than a bicycle. The top speed is very slow comparatively, and if you fall… You fall on your feet. Forwards? Feet. Backwards? Feet. Sideways? Feet. If your feet were strapped into the pedals (like rollerblades…) it would be a deathtrap.
Now I wish I has a hot air balloon for my transportation optimization algorithm.
Someone else put it this way.
Sometimes I walk to work; sometimes I drive my car; other times i ride a bicycle. Whichever option I pick, I hate anyone who isn’t doing the same thing.
This seems totally rational to me. I think we might have a problem.
That’s not true. When I drive I still hate drivers
A therapist once told me that who you are when you drive is who you really are.
I don’t drive, so I guess I’m a nobody.
That may be the most American thing anyone has ever said!
Also, the same therapist told me that she has a number of alcoholic patients who moved to New York City simply because they knew there was a good 24 hour mass transit system and they wouldn’t have to drive drunk.
Technicalities:
Planes are safer per mile but not per trip. One could argue that if people spent the same amount of time in both then it would be far more fatalities on aircrafts.
Cars are technically the major source of danger for bikes and scooters.
also a fun fact, while commercial aviation is very safe, private planes are much more dangerous, being almost as dangerous per mile as a regular car (and you get a lot more miles per hour of travel)
That already fits with the chart - “commercial aviation” is “airlines” and “private planes” are “light aircraft”.
private planes are much more dangerous, being almost as dangerous per mile as a regular car
that is because they are operated by semi-competent people who often have less practice then they have in car.
imagine how competent driver you are when you have your fresh license. it is the same with piloting license. and now imagine you are a hobby pilot and can afford to spend in the cockpit 3 hours per month. your skill is not really going to get significantly better. you are probably flying airplane that is at the end of its life, because that is only one you can afford, and there may be no one keeping an eye on you telling you “this is not how we do it, it is risky, dangerous, and you will get someone killed”.
Trains, scooters and/ motorcycles are convenient for travel? I mean sure, if you never carry anything anywhere and/or you love how every other person in the world smells after they finish their 12 hour shift of breaking big rocks with smaller rocks.
Randall is offically carpilled
Airliners should be below boats for convenience 😂 just because of airport security and bag collection…
Airplane least convenient for travel from bedroom to kitchen
Walking least convenient for travel to Antarctica
Iduno, travelling to Antarctica might be more difficult with skis than walking 😂
Not sure I’d put unicycles as being safer than bicycles.
I’d guess it’s because unicycles are used in a much narrower range of circumstances. Few people are being hit by cars commuting to work on a unicycle, nor are there many mountain-unicyclists getting injured.
Which honestly just speaks for the insane amount of training mountain-unicyclists have done
You joke (I think?), but the people I know that do unicycling (including mountain-bike style unicycling, and unicycling Himalayan trails, and crazy stuff like that) do do an insane amount of training 😆
I was joking, but i guess now i know what im gonna watch on youtube next
You’d have to. Anyone who mountain bikes regularly knows how much work it is to climb some trails with 500% gear range. I can’t imagine the work involved with a single gear to climb on some trails. Brutal.
There are basically no unsafe ways to get off of a unicycle. You can fall in any direction and just end up standing next to your unicycle. Compare that to a bicycle “over the handle bars”-accident.
It’s probably there because you don’t reach as high speeds on a unicycle
The placement of „Skis“ in this will trigger every Scandinavian I know. Should definitely be in the top left.
I’m from the Scandinavian country WITHOUT mountains and with less snow and am as such not triggered.
You don’t know me, though, so I guess your statement might still hold true 😁
In Canada too. It’s not that common, but also not out of place to see people doing their regular commute on skis.
Unicycles are clearly more dangerous than skis.
Trust you on that but will ski across the pond to check and be sure
Even us close to Scandinavia get triggered. There aren’t that many practical ways to get around at winter. Skis work when feet don’t.
Scandinavia is their zone of specialty
Are hot air balloon not like super safe, last accident I think was a guy that made his own DIY hot air balloon but before that it has been relatively safe. I think America has only seen like less than 800 deaths total.
If the comic put in zeppelins…
You’d need to normalize the number to deaths per balloon ride.
Only three people died last year playing Russian Roulette, must be pretty safe! /s
The Dyke Delta doesn’t fit anywhere on this graph.
an American homebuilt aircraft designed in the United States in the 1960s and marketed for amateur construction.
Doesn’t get safer than that
Hmmm, Boeing vs me being paranoid about my own safety.
