What is something that people think is dangerous but in reality is completely harmless?

Datman2020@lemmy.fmhy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 310 points –
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Sharks.

More people die due to things like selfies, falling out of your bed, tipped vending machines and heck, even balloons, then to a shark.

Just because something can kill you doesnt mean it will, more often than not, it actually wont.

Here there might be a confusion between danger, and statistics.

all those examples are about events or things that are far more frequent than be near a shark

if the average person could be close to a shark as many time in life than leaving a bed, be close to something that can flip, or to people taking selfies, statistics might be very different

Most of the fear of sharks is due to media. Like the vast majority of sharks will not attack a human even when in close proximity. There are like 1 or 2 species of sharks that have any danger to humans: bull and tiger sharks if I remember correctly. And even those 2 will most likely not attack, it's just that other species are no danger at all.

A shark killed my brother a few years back. He was just standing there minding his own business and this shark came out of nowhere and toppled a vending machine on top of him. Poor bastard never knew what hit him.

That's because people rarely are where sharks can kill them. If they were, sharks would quite often kill them. Much more often than vending machines, though I'd watch for those too.

Wolves are similar, but for more understandable reasons. They may leave us alone, but they really love our livestock.

I'd be interested in the death numbers relative to exposure. What percentage of people who tip vending machines die compared to those who swim among sharks at the beach? How about compared to those who sleep in a bed?

My favorite has always been that falling coconuts kill more people than sharks