It’s called Maximum Overdrive.
Oh shit, SHARK CAR!
Y’know, I think I could believe that cars kill more people than sharks even at sea.
Christine (1983) rolls into the room.
And Maximum Overdrive too.
And Herbie Goes Bananas.
And Debbie Does Dallas
…wait, what were we talking about again?
I’m sure most people are aware that the difference in danger is quite large but maybe not just how absurdly large.
Sharks kill about 10 people per year.
For cars the number is 1,670,000 deaths. Every year.
As a point of comparison, in 2025, about 250k people were killed in armed conflicts, which was the highest number in decades.
A lot of people think it’s weird to hate cars as much as I do. But they are quantitatively in a similar category as the Holocaust in terms of how many people they kill. From the perspective, it seems a bit crazy not to hate them.
Sources: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267 https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/shark-attacks/yearly-worldwide-summary/ https://www.npr.org/2026/06/09/nx-s1-5850355/data-highest-conflicts-iran-israel-ukraine-russia-world-war-ii
While I don’t disagree much, let’s not be silly. The numbers need to be divided by hours of exposure.
I think both metrics would tell you different things. Even unadjusted it gives you an idea about which thing you should be concerned about addressing and reducing your own risk or the risk of those you care about.
Plus, I don’t have exposure data like that to make the comparison. If you do then it would certainly be interesting to see.
This was exactly my thought. Like I grew up by the ocean where lots of people swam and there were sharks. Did car deaths outnumber shark deaths? Of course. Was it 6 orders of magnitude as much? Not even close lmao.
I want us to redefine “pro-life” to mean pro-urbanism, pro-renewables, and pro-universal-healthcare. Just those 3 things would make for such a dramatic increase in life expectancy and fall in child mortality, it’s crazy.
Great idea!
Also, in both cases many more are killed by humans than the other way around.
I am somewhat disturbed by how right you are about this. Car sales estimates are 90-100 million new cars per year, so assuming we’re not putting 99 million new cars on the road every year, we’re destroying a lot more than we’re making. I’m not even gonna look at the numbers for sharks cuz I know it’ll make me big sad.
And yet people think I’m crazy for hating people as much as I do.
I’d ask if you come from !fuckcars@lemmy.world but I think we both know the answer is yes.
Me too.
I’ve always felt this way but that community has been huge for making me realize that a lot of other people feel the same way too!
#theydidthemath
Did anyone else think this was going to be cows? (more people are killed by cattle each year than by shark attacks)
🙋🏻
moose jaws!!!
Stephen King wrote this book and it was made into a movie and a Futurama episode.
Stephen King wrote this short story and directed the movie it was made into.
Really? I must have forgotten the part of Christine where the car becomes amphibious!
Granted, it HAS been a few decades since I read it…
Yeah, I tried searching for it, but all I got where some sites with “20 best ghost car movies of all times”…
FuckCars is spreading 😂😂
How repugnant.
So it makes sense. In the Cars universe, everything seems to be build for human, but perhaps sentient cars started to kill off everyone and then live in that world.
Hippos kill a lot more people than sharks.
I’m frankly surprised that hippos kill ANY sharks tbh 🤷🏻
I’m not. IIRC they’re technically herbivores, they just really fuckin’ hate other creatures for some reason
Nah, they’re just very territorial, protective of their young, and deceptively fast. Long as you steer clear, it’s not like they’re going to stalk you for several miles to kill you like a tiger might 🤷🏻
Last I checked, there’s very little territorial overlap between hippos and sharks 😄
I used to be surf patrol. Would explain it, “You’re far more likely to die in the car on the way to the beach. If you survive that, odds are you drown before a shark is even in the area. So stay where I can see you and you might just get lucky one day.”
