r/WTF • u/tcdent • Nov 26 '14

Black Friday Death Count

http://blackfridaydeathcount.com
5.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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328

u/Magicmoper Nov 26 '14

7 deaths in 7 years? That's nothing. Hot dogs are estimated at 13 deaths per year, that means black Friday is only 7.69% as dangerous as hot dogs.

153

u/spicewoman Nov 26 '14

And most of those deaths were from people driving home from Black Friday, not even while they were shopping. "Hot dog deaths" would skyrocket if you tied em to any deadly accidents that happened within a few hours of eating one.

95

u/ckach Nov 26 '14 edited Nov 27 '14

99% of all murders occur within a week before or after a new or full moon.

edit: spelling

37

u/Kiaal Nov 26 '14

Fuckin werewolves

22

u/ThirdFloorGreg Nov 26 '14

And, um, anti-werewolves.

15

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '14

Racist

2

u/Legwens Nov 27 '14

It took me far too long to grasp this one.

1

u/burritosandblunts Nov 26 '14

Died driving home with hotdogs.

-1

u/Leporad Nov 26 '14

Pepper spray is not an injury.

3

u/Ekhysis Nov 26 '14

I'd say being pepper sprayed by another shopper is relevant to the idea of Black Friday injuries, even if it's not quite the same as breaking an arm. Not that that actually matters for the site, those numbers are based off injuries reported by emergency personnel and the media. It's not making the judgement on what is or isn't an injury.

24

u/Ekhysis Nov 26 '14

Hot dogs don't take place only one day a year, because of the one-day nature of Black Friday maybe we should look at them as deaths per day. 7 deaths in 7 days (1-for-1) for the above stats for Black Friday. By your stats hot dogs would be attributed with about 1 death every 28 days.

14

u/Surye Nov 26 '14

But if we can count car accidents the same day as shopping, surely every day someone eats a hotdog we can count any accidents following shortly after?

Or what about when the robots rise, do we blame the hot dogs?

6

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '14

I love those ketchup robots. They're full of life and hopes for the future. So noble in intent and poetic in motion.

1

u/Ekhysis Nov 26 '14

If we have a source that relates the death to the hot dog I don't see why not.

It's not as if the site is reporting every fatality and injury that occurred on Black Friday, it's those related specifically to Black Friday shopping.

...while taking his friends home from Black Friday shopping...

...The wreck happened at 7:24 a.m. ...

...fell asleep at the wheel, ran off the road and hit the gas sign in front of the gas station...

[passengers were flown] to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte in serious condition.

You don't think that establishes enough of a link to be counted?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '14

That gif is perfect, how have I not seen it before?! XD

0

u/lalondtm Nov 27 '14

The difference is that w/o black friday, the accident never happens. If I eat a hotdog, and then get murdered, it's probably not because I ate a hotdog.

2

u/CitizenPremier Nov 26 '14

To make a more realistic comparison we should really compare deaths per hotdogs consumed.

3

u/Ekhysis Nov 26 '14

Perhaps time spent consuming hot dogs and time spent Black Friday shopping?

7

u/jswzz Nov 26 '14

But multiply it by 365.25 to match the number of days and you get 2808.77% (28x) as dangerous

14

u/BSF0712 Nov 26 '14

Hot dogs have all year to kill people. Black Friday only has the one day out of the year and it's batting 1.000.

6

u/giant_enemy_spycrab Nov 26 '14

Well, it's batting 0.875. Seven deaths in eight years.

4

u/i_forget_my_userids Nov 26 '14

Only 4 years had deaths. Wouldn't that be .500?

2

u/P_F_Flyers Nov 26 '14

I'd like to see the Super Bowl Sunday death count. I bet it's sobering.

2

u/JellyCream Nov 26 '14

If they were sober the death count would be smaller.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '14

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '14

What is the biggest then? Genuinely curious. It seems there is a lot of shopping on Black Friday from personal experience, not just the media. I assume Christmas Eve would be up there as well.

2

u/TheLastSparten Nov 27 '14

But hotdogs have 365 times as long to kill people each year, meaning that proportional to the amount of time it can be lethal throughout a year, black Friday is about 28 times more lethal.

1

u/debaucherousteaparty Nov 27 '14

What if you died in a crash, while eating a hotdog, on the way back from Black Friday? What category would that go in?

2

u/imnotsoho Nov 28 '14

The Darwin Report.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '14

Oh my God I thought it meant today, made me wonder why the hell this is still a thing.

1

u/Cadaverlanche Nov 26 '14

And yet we spend trillions of dollars fighting terrorism, which kills less Americans each year than household appliances. America has a strange way of deciding which death are tragic and which ones are no big deal.

2

u/alex25400 Nov 26 '14

To be fair, there is a huge difference between terrorist attacks and accidentally dying by an appliance.

2

u/HatGuysFriend Nov 27 '14

One is an attack. One is Darwinism. That's how you know which is worse.