Black Friday death count

by csmuk • 13 years ago

89 41 13 years ago

jere• 13 years ago

My new metal band

I would say this is something that should be brought to people's attention... but somehow I don't think the kind of people that do these things would care.

d0mme• 13 years ago

consumption terror (from everywhere ads) with money people actually don't own. what else could be better right now than focusing people on "important" things in life than protest about banks, injustice, poverty etc.

sad world.

nightski• 13 years ago

What? The 4 deaths and 63 injuries? Over 6 years? Doesn't seem like it is something worth caring about, especially when participation is entirely optional.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

I think optional participation once you've been properly informed of the risks, however small is fine, but uninformed participation should be discouraged.

breischl• 13 years ago

Optional unless you work there, like the guy that got trampled in 2008.

Sure, it doesn't really rate on the same scale as car accidents and cancer. On the other hand, this is entirely avoidable, and done for what many (myself included) would call really stupid.

DanBC• 13 years ago

Is there any comparison to other days?

meowface• 13 years ago

Good question. I imagine the incidence of shopping/consumerism-related deaths and injuries is a lot lower for the rest of the year, but it would be interesting to get some numbers.

gojomo• 13 years ago

Macabre. Effective.

Perhaps should reset the headline counter each year, with prior-year counters (and all-time since launch) somewhere below for reference.

hsod• 13 years ago

That seems dramatic. I was struck by how low the numbers were.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

I actually told international students here (who are really uninformed about black friday and the kind of mess it can be -- they have only heard about the great deals you can get) that they'd be best advised to just order stuff online because of things like this.

ghaff• 13 years ago

Well, they're best off ordering online not because of "stuff like this" but that hopefully they have much better things to do with their time than standing in line and dealing with chaos when they don't have to. For whatever small savings I might find on Black Friday I can't imagine going through the hassle.

nitrogen• 13 years ago

If one's time is effectively worthless (which may be the case if one is unemployed or a student), one might be able to get below-cost deals by camping out by a Best Buy for a day or two in advance. But one should only do this if there is really nothing better to do, or if the recreational enjoyment of the event (perhaps by camping out with one's friends) makes it worth it.

pavanred2• 13 years ago

Here is an excerpt from the citation provided for an incident in which 2 of the deaths were reported.

The violence erupted on Black Friday, the traditional post-Thanksgiving start of the holiday shopping surge, but authorities indicated the shooting wasn't related to a shopping frenzy.

Anyway, 4+63 over a period of 7 years for the entire population, statistically the probability of getting killed/injured is almost 0. Do we even need such analysis?

k3n• 13 years ago

I think the commentary lies more in the fact that it's even happening, and will likely only get worse if the trends continue. Black Friday is not a real holiday, but we [as in the U.S., mainly] have let marketers create it out of thin air, giving them our attention until they whip us into a feeding frenzy of consumption.

Obey. Consume.

pavanred2• 13 years ago

The visible trend in the data provided, 2011 was the worst with over 40 injuries and 1 death. While, the preceding and succeeding years have be rather quiet.

Besides, marketers creating trends is neither a new phenomenon nor is it localized to the US, for example, marketers in India have popularized a holiday tradition in the past few years, Akshaya Tritiya, where purchasing gold is supposed to be auspicious and brings about good luck. Though it is loosely based on a religious occasion, it isn't a real holiday. Besides, the surprising bit is the prices aren't shot down to boost sales as in Black Friday, instead the prices shoot up as a result of the demand caused by the shopping frenzy.

pkaye• 13 years ago

Seems like best to stay away from Walmart.

ams6110• 13 years ago

Good advice in general.

ars• 13 years ago

Walmart is just very very big (they are the largest non-state employer in the world), so it makes sense they have more cases.

mjn• 13 years ago

Wikipedia has a somewhat more detailed summary for those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)#Violenc...

Although, the site linked here does do a more rhetorically effective job.

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

That's actually a lot less than I was expecting.

mwsherman2• 13 years ago

In the years covered in this list (2012-2006), there have been 238 fatalities due to lightning strikes.

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/statistics.htm

thisisdave• 13 years ago

But that covers all days of the year, right? So the corresponding number for just Black Friday would probably be 0 or 1 deaths by lightning.

iLoch• 13 years ago

Ok, how many times does lighting strike the US every day? How many Black Fridays are there every year?

Let's just assume that this level of violence is constant, and there's a Black Friday every day of the year (which doesn't make much sense at all): Multiply those 4 deaths by 365 and it's not hard to see that this is more fatal than lightning. However I think the nearly equally disgusting part is the fact that people are getting hurt at all. You're lining up to spend your money, calm down.

batbomb• 13 years ago

Apparently you don't know much about lightning if you are multiplying by 365.

mwsherman2• 13 years ago

Fair enough, re Black Friday being a single day per year. There are around 2.5MM deaths per year in the US, which works out to around 47,000 on the Black Fridays during the time period (assuming the numbers are average).

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/deaths.htm

tcdent2• 13 years ago

This my site. I would have submitted it here, since I frequent HN way more than Reddit, but I thought /r/WTF was more appropriate.

The real-time pane of Google Analytics has been pretty entertaining: http://33c4d819db899251066f-11ab2606b95aca1e296d8d1ea376f411...

toomuchtodo2• 13 years ago

There an RSS feed or any other way to poll the site for updates?

tcdent2• 13 years ago

I don't think it's really necessary, since there's only one day a year that I can update it.

Quite a few people have been calling it a 'real time' service, which is a bit silly once you actually think about it.

csmuk• 13 years ago

Actually I saw it on reddit WTF and posted it here because I thought people would find it interesting.

It's actually a quite disturbing vision of how people treat each other for a discount.

njharman• 13 years ago

How sad is that I'm stunned death / injury counts are so low? I assumed 1+ people trampled to death every year.

radicalbyte• 13 years ago

South Park fan, I assume? :)

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

Remember, November 29th is Buy Nothing Day.

https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd

kimonos• 13 years ago

Black Friday or not, there are deaths and injuries everyday...

Houshalter• 13 years ago

Well that's a lot lower than I thought.

chrismcb2• 13 years ago

So how does this compare to the rest of the year? How does it compare on a per shopper basis over the rest of the year? Less than one death per day, and about 10 injuries per day. What are the statistics for other events that draw large crowds?

Black Friday death count

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