For the last two posts, unless I am misunderstanding the OP those don’t fit the question.
Those are examples of people dying on the way to funerals. The OP is asking for examples of someone dying on the way to the funeral of someone who themselves had died on the way to a funeral.
The OP understates the overall fatality rate in vehicle miles by about 37% (really it is more like 1.57 deaths per 100 million kilometers). But I’m also guessing overstates the number of funerals there are per year (a significant portion of total deaths result in no ceremonial funeral), the average number of people who attend each funera (though 50 km, round trip might not be too far on the high side).
So yeah, I’d agree it has probably happened in the U.S. a couple times a decade. But then there are two other layers unlikeliness:
Someone notices that this sequence of events has happened.
They tell someone who puts it on the record in a way we can now find and document (as opposed to ‘a friend of a friend’ stories).
Since I can’t speak for everyone, I spoke for myself. The OP asked if anyone had heard of any news story of “someone [dying] in a traffic accident on the way to a funeral for someone who died in a traffic accident on the way to a funeral for someone who died in a traffic accident”.
Despite the anecdotes linked above in which someone died in an accident on their way to the funeral or during the course of their job linked tangentially to a funeral procession, the answer is still no. I haven’t heard of any news stories that match the above criteria. But even if there were, there would still be no statistical data to analyze.
I don’t think anyone here is suggesting any statistical deviance from expectations based on uncorrelated events. The data is there; you are free to update/refine/correct my numbers in the OP. But in any case, as I said, I was just interested if an occurrence happened to be recorded in the media. I suspect it has, but I don’t know how to search for it efficiently.
Do you mean driving from your house to the church/funeral home/whatever? Or driving from the church/funeral home/whatever to the burial site? Because if the latter the chances would seem to probably be lower, because such things are usually done caravan style with a police escort to stop other traffic, and are generally driving slower than the speed limit. If the former, I’d assume the rate of accident would probably be the same as driving anywhere else at that given time of day/traffic conditions.
Your hostility in this thread is frankly bizarre. I’m simply curious about something, and I did my best to get a back-of-the-envelope guesstimate, which you are welcome to help refine. Why does my question anger you so much?
And yes, the data is there: the data on traffic deaths per km in various regions on various roadways, the data on funeral/memorial attendance, etc. I think we can assume for the sake of an order-of-magnitude estimate that the events are uncorrelated and use publicly available statistics, if you think my guesstimate is so totally wrong. In any case my OP question is whether or not you have seen something like this recorded in the media. You are welcome to say simply “no” rather than persisting in airing your odd annoyance with my question.
More generally, I would be interested to include all activities directly in response to the person’s death: the friends and families’ attendance at the funeral/memorial or gathering at the home, the driving from the burial site or driving to scatter the ashes or whatever – all of that. And also include any cross-country flights in the calculation and any other means of transportation or risks. But I agree, for a rough calculation I would assume probably the same rate of accident as driving anywhere else at that given time of day/traffic conditions
I think the “hostility” comes from the part I quoted above. When I first read your post, I too wondered “what is the question here?” It sounds like you are looking for anecdotes, not facts.
[QUOTE=iamnotbatman]
Has anyone seen a news story with an account of this sort of thing actually happening?
[/quote]
Seems like a pretty clear question. I may be wrong that it shouldn’t be in GQ (though I welcome factual links to any statistical data or analysis), but that is hardly reason for lines like “You mean the numbers you pulled out of your ass?”, as well as doggedly and disruptively focusing on what she perceives is a misuse of the word “irony”…
