What's your favorite weekend pastime? Some of us like to travel, either by plane, car, or motorcycle. Others enjoy sports such as running, swimming, cycling, or horseback riding. If you're a bit adventurous, maybe you like to scuba dive, hang glide, or climb mountains. Of course, an element of danger comes with all of these activities, but it's not always easy to differentiate what only feels dangerous from what might actually kill you. The following infographic from ChessInTheAir.com offers a ranking of a few of the most dangerous hobbies based on the statistical likelihood of death per hour.

Of course, statistics can get complicated and there are a lot of factors at play here, so this should only be treated as a rough estimate. Some of the data is restricted to a specific country (e.g. backcountry skiing in Austria may not be representative of risks worldwide). Other data is skewed for activities that were historically far more dangerous than they are today (e.g. Formula 1 racing, which is based on death rates since 1950). However, it still offers some interesting revelations about dangerous hobbies — most people wouldn't assume that riding a motorcycle to work is more dangerous than scuba diving hundreds of feet beneath the ocean's surface.

For more perspective on dangers that affect our daily lives, check out our previous article, “The Most Common Causes of Death.”

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The opening image in this article includes a U.S. Air Force photo taken by Staff Sgt. Sara Csurilla.

Written by Patrick McCarthy