Jobs people do willing that I will never understand.

[Aedilred]

I disagree strongly. Most of the evil that is done is not acknowledged to be actually evil by the party committing the evil.

I don't know about anyone else, but I kind of thought that was at least part of the point...

[Keltest]

Larger cities usually have at least a core of fully employed firemen, maybe backed up by volunteers. Strange that it doesn't show up.

Maybe. But everybody knows firefighting is dangerous, and people go into it prepared for danger. Nobody thinks a garbage collector is living in constant peril, even if its true.

In other words, deaths caused by negligence seem to outnumber deaths caused by legitimate danger.

[Chen]

http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-researc...-united-states

Shows 64 deaths in 2014. Wikipedia shows 1 134 400 firefighters in the US in 2014. So that comes out to around the 5.6 per 100k so it would be below the cutoff on that chart which seems to stop at ~10 for the police.

[Xyril]

Maybe. But everybody knows firefighting is dangerous, and people go into it prepared for danger. Nobody thinks a garbage collector is living in constant peril, even if its true.

In other words, deaths caused by negligence seem to outnumber deaths caused by legitimate danger.

I'm not sure your reasoning is a great gauge for what are deaths by negligence and deaths by "legitimate danger." There are certain jobs which, for a variety of idiosyncratic reasons, are well-known to be dangerous by average chump on the street. But let us never forget that average chump on the street doesn't know nothing about nothing. Even if the average chump on the street has no idea that being a garbage collector is dangerous, somewhere during the process of becoming a committed full-time garbage collector, he will figure it out. Liability being what it is, it makes no sense to hide the fact. Companies cut corners when the cost-savings justify doing so. Telling all the new garbage collectors, "Hey, this job is actually far more dangerous than people realize, so stay on your toes," isn't a very costly measure to take if it would prevent what you seem to be arguing are the majority of deaths on the job (deaths by negligence, and not "legitimate danger.")

[2D8HP]

I don't see firemen on the chart, and there's no way it's due to not making the cutoff, not if police made the cutoff

Um.. that Police and Firefighters have lower on-the-job-death-rates is precisely my point, because someone posted that

..A lot of "bad" jobs pay disproportionately high wages relative to the skills they require. Garbage man is the classic example

So I posted:

Skills shmills.

Garbage collectors are more likely to die on the job than police and fire.



They're not paid enough.

But if you define "danger" as on-the-job-injuries rather than deaths you get a different ranking:

I believe it's per year, per 100,000 workers.

source

another source

You get a different list if you go by injuries instead of fatalities.

For more details and info on methodology, check out the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But yes, a higher percentage of Police (and many other trades) than Firefighters die on the job (in San Francisco at least, it's cancer shortly after retirement that kills former Firefighters, but that doesn't count as "on-the-job").

[Keltest]

I'm not sure your reasoning is a great gauge for what are deaths by negligence and deaths by "legitimate danger." There are certain jobs which, for a variety of idiosyncratic reasons, are well-known to be dangerous by average chump on the street. But let us never forget that average chump on the street doesn't know nothing about nothing. Even if the average chump on the street has no idea that being a garbage collector is dangerous, somewhere during the process of becoming a committed full-time garbage collector, he will figure it out. Liability being what it is, it makes no sense to hide the fact. Companies cut corners when the cost-savings justify doing so. Telling all the new garbage collectors, "Hey, this job is actually far more dangerous than people realize, so stay on your toes," isn't a very costly measure to take if it would prevent what you seem to be arguing are the majority of deaths on the job (deaths by negligence, and not "legitimate danger.")

Perhaps I phrased that poorly. For firefighters, the entire point of the job is to charge into an already dangerous situation. People are given training and equipment to handle that danger. If youre, say, a garbage man, theres lots of potential ways to hurt yourself, but most of them require doing something you shouldn't be doing in the first place, and therefore precautions against it are geared towards keeping people out of the danger rather than surviving it.

[2D8HP]

Perhaps I phrased that poorly. For firefighters, the entire point of the job is to charge into an already dangerous situation. People are given training and equipment to handle that danger. If youre, say, a garbage man, theres lots of potential ways to hurt yourself, but most of them require doing something you shouldn't be doing in the first place, and therefore precautions against it are geared towards keeping people out of the danger rather than surviving it.

What kills garbagemen is the same thing that mostly kills Highway Patrolmen.

Cars and motorists.

It's simple, automobiles are extremely dangerous.

No mystery at all

Read up-thread.

[AMFV]

It's also important to remember that while fires are really dangerous. They're also very very rare in the modern world. A large portion of our construction technology and lifestyle habits are intended exclusively to avoid fires. There are probably areas where being a firefighter becomes much more dangerous. But most of the firefighters I know, tend to spend more of their time waiting and training than actually fighting fires. Which isn't a huge surprise given our focus on making things not easy to catch on-fire.

[Knaight]

It's also important to remember that while fires are really dangerous. They're also very very rare in the modern world. A large portion of our construction technology and lifestyle habits are intended exclusively to avoid fires. There are probably areas where being a firefighter becomes much more dangerous. But most of the firefighters I know, tend to spend more of their time waiting and training than actually fighting fires. Which isn't a huge surprise given our focus on making things not easy to catch on-fire.

Making things hard to light up is part of it, but the really big reason that fires are so much less present with modern technology is that we don't have a bunch of tiny fires around all the time to start them. Electric lighting instead of lighting technology based on how fires also emit light made a big difference in that regard.

[Xyril]

Perhaps I phrased that poorly. For firefighters, the entire point of the job is to charge into an already dangerous situation. People are given training and equipment to handle that danger. If youre, say, a garbage man, theres lots of potential ways to hurt yourself, but most of them require doing something you shouldn't be doing in the first place, and therefore precautions against it are geared towards keeping people out of the danger rather than surviving it.

Nah, your phrasing was spot on, it's just the reasoning that I disagreed with. As AMFV pointed out, there is danger inherent to the job that can't be dismissed as "potential ways to hurt yourself" or the garbage collector "doing something you shouldn't be doing in the first place." Are there negligent acts that a garbage man, or construction worker, can do that make it more likely that cars kill them? Absolutely, just like there are negligent things a firefighter can do that make the fire far more dangerous than one handled by a careful, skilled firefighter.

However, that doesn't change the fact that there are dangers out there that are not caused by the construction worker or garbage collector, that he is aware of, but only has limited ability to mitigate. The fact that AMFV had to point out to you that those dangers existed reiterates my original point: Just because the danger of some jobs aren't popularly known doesn't mean those dangers don't exist or aren't known by the guys working those jobs.