You’re probably right. The health benefits of walking probably out-weigh the risk of being hit crossing that street.

But that 4000-to-one ratio of deaths due to heart-disease vs car-smack is not a slam-dunk argument in this case. Of the ~2000 people in my neighborhood, only about 100 ever seem to walk anywhere at all. (I’m guessing. I walk around most days, at various times, and I see the same 20 people over and over.) And nobody ever crosses that street. So very very few people ever get the opportunity to get killed as a pedestrian.

At least in the suburbs.

Let’s say that instead of crossing that street I had to swing on a rope across a deep chasm every day. I’m reassured because the CDC tells me that only 2 people/year are killed doing this. But later on I find out that only about 200 people in the entire country ever swing across chasms at all, and many of them only a few times a year.

So I guess I’m saying this is an exceptional activity, and I don’t know how risky it is because so few people partake. Maybe crossing that street is as risky as skydiving? If you’re a skydiver, what’re your odds every time you jump? 0.00009? Or 0.0000001? There’s a big difference. I’ll take the later, but not the former.

161 deaths in 2006: V03 “Pedestrian injured in collision with car, pickup truck, or van”

418 deaths in 2006: V05 “Pedestrian injured in collision with railway train or railway vehicle”

4262 deaths in 2006: V43 “Car occupant injured in collision with car, pickup truck, or van”

631,250 deaths in 2006: “Heart Disease”

Imagine that we talked about something with a time proportional to how many of our neighbors that something has killed.
Then for every minute we talk about getting hit while walking across the street, we would talk for 30 minutes about car accidents, and 65 hours about heart disease.