The article "The Risk Factor" by Bill Bryson is one of many articles written in his book I'm a Stranger Here Myself. The point of this article is to show why America is a more dangerous place to live than the United Kingdom.
In this article Bill reads a book called The Book of Risks: Fascinating Facts About the Chances We Take Every Day by Larry Laudan. This book really opens Bills eyes on the fact that Americans are twice as dangerous to themselves as Britons. He reads in the book about some things that can happen to people in the United States that just aren't possible to happen to people in Britain. Some of these things include natural disasters and animal attacks that wouldn't happen in Britain. However, the biggest risk in America comes from guns. He reads that there are 200 million guns in the US and every year 40,000 Americans die from gunshot wounds. Compared to the British rate of .4 gunshot deaths per 100,000 people in the UK, the US rate is 6.8 per 100,000. The last thing that Bill discusses in this article is the chance of getting lung cancer from being exposed to the smoke of others. Although the 1 in 30,000 risk of this happening sounds reasonably severe, he goes on to show that by eating one pork chop a week you are statistically more likely of getting cancer. Bills then argues, why ban smoking on the grounds of public safety when anyone can own a gun and drive around unbuckled.
Now that I have summarized the article "The Risk Factor" I can state my own opinions. I believe that Bill takes these statistics way too seriously. Yeah it's probably good to know the chances of dying from certain things, but I don't think that any of these percentages are high enough for me to worry about. I would almost like it better not knowing any of the facts about the risks we take. Most of them are so low that I think they are pretty much pointless to know about.
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