Bob Sihler wrote: While it may be more statistically dangerous to get into a car ...
It's not statistically more dangerous to get into a car. At 16 (and sober), your risk of death when getting in a car is probably less than 1 in 100,000 (for the driving population as a whole, it's less than one in 10 million per outing, even without excluding drunk and texting drivers).
Not many people have crossed the southern Indian Ocean solo, but there have been fatalities and the death rate is surely many orders of magnitude higher than getting in a car. My guess, just a guess, is that it's in the neighborhood of 1/100.
"Abby Sunderland was on the wrong type of boat (a racing yacht) in the wrong location (the southern Indian Ocean) at the wrong time of year (winter in the southern hemisphere). Other than those minor details it was a well-planned voyage."