Life's Little Gambles
Illustration
by Bill Bryson

The things we most fear like crashing in an airplane, being killed by a burglar, dying on the operating table are unlikely ever to happen to us. "We are risk illiterate," one safety expert says. "We have a completely distorted view of life's real perils." The chance of dying in a commercial airplane crash is just one in 800,000. You are more likely to choke to death on a piece of food. You are twice as likely to be killed playing a sport as you are to be stabbed to death by a stranger. And the chance of dying of a medical complication or mistake is tiny (one in 84,000). You take a far greater risk riding in a car. One in 5000 of us die that way. The next time you buy a lottery ticket, bear in mind that you are at least 13 times as likely to be struck by lightning as you are to hit the jack…

Saturday Evening Post, Life's Little Gambles, by Bill Bryson