32 - Driving shortens your life more than Cigarettes

---

April 13 2025

There's a famous quote drilled into elementary schools: "Every cigarette shortens your life by 11 minutes". It comes from the University of Bristol and is essentially a piece of propoganda.

The reasoning is as follows:Male smokers (nevermind women they might skew the facts) die 6.5 years earlier. The average smoker smokes 311688 cigarettes per lifetime. 6.5years * 365days/year * 24hrs/day * 60min/hr = 3,418,560 minutes / 311688cigarettes ~ 11 minutes/cigarette

I won't insult you by detailing the absurdity of this reasoning

Instead we'll do our own study - too bad I'm not paid thousands by the government.

There is 1 fatal accident per 790,000 miles driven, some sources say it's now higher at 750,000.

The median age for driver fatality is 75

The median life expectancy is 77.5 so net loss in life is 2.5 years per fatal accident

2.5 years = 1,314,000 minutes lost. 1,314,000minutes / 790,000miles = 1.66 minutes lost per mile driven anywhere on the road. (so basically you're aging twice as fast in a car going 36mph i.e. every minute spent in the car is one minute lost on your life (it takes 1.66 minutes to travel a mile at 36mph))

11minutes/1.66minutes = 6.6 miles/cigarette. So if you're comfortable going 13 miles round trip to work everyday, you might as well stay home and smoke two cigarettes. You'll enjoy that more.

Now with the 15 minute cities they talk about they're going to plagiarize my study and demand everyone stop driving cars. As always you heard it here first.