If you read the newspapers and listen to the TV news you could think that the world is becoming a more dangerous place. The headlines tell us of terrorist attacks, mass shootings, conflicts in various parts of the world, road traffic accidents and so on. So a recent headline on the BBC News website caught my attention: ‘2017 safest year for air travel as fatalities fall.’ The article reported that 2017 was the safest year in history for commercial airlines. There were ten fatal accidents, resulting in 79 deaths last year. That compared with 16 accidents and 303 lives lost in 2016. In 2005 there were over 1,000 air travel related deaths. The figures refer to civil aircraft certified to carry at least 14 people so do not include smaller aircraft or cargo planes.

So do we really live in such a dangerous world? While we might perceive that the world is becoming more dangerous the reality is the opposite. The world has never been safer. There are more of us living longer than at any time in human history. UN data shows that worldwide, the average life expectancy at birth was 71.5 years (68 years and 4 months for males and 72 years and 8 months for females) over the period 2010–2015. This is more than double the life expectancy in 1900, due to better nutrition, health care (including maternity and child health care) and so on. Even the number of people killed in wars, has declined dramatically. In the 1950s, wars caused almost 250 deaths per million people but now the figure is fewer than 10 per million. That is a 96% decrease!

There are still huge differences in life expectancy among regions and countries, from 50 years in Sierra Leone to nearly 84 in Japan, so some parts of the world are more dangerous than others – it depends on where you have the luck to be born.

As we enter 2018, I want to send you and your families best wishes for the coming year and remind you that we live in a much more safer world than any of our ancestors did.

Take care!

Iain