Concentration of Risk....or something like that

A terminology problem.

Method A of doing something has an accident rate of 100/whatever. Method B of doing the same thing has an accident rate of .01/whatever. The accidents caused by method A kill an average of one person. The accidents caused by method B kill an average of 1000 people.

Now, we would coolly judge B to be safer than A. There is no question, however, that B’s accidents typically kill more people, and on that basis are more noticeable.

Is there a common phrase for this? Do we call it “concentration of risk”?

What is your “whatever”? If it’s 100/1000 and .01/1000 it’s totally different from say 100/1000000 and 01/1000000.

I think he’s considering things like airlines reporting statistics in terms of “deaths per million passenger miles”, while Amtrak reports “derailments per year”.

What that’s called, though, I wouldn’t hazard a guess.