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Flying is safer than driving. Is it really?
CalmOceans
Member UncommonPosts: 2,437
So according to statistics flying is safer than driving.
But is the statement fair, don't those driving accidencts include people who are drunk driving and speeding?
If you didn't include those and only included people who drive safely, would flying still be safer? I somehow doubt it. What do you think?
Comments
To compare, you need first full information on the metrics of statistics, methods of calculation, etc.
Otherwise, the question becomes akin to a question "Is sweet louder than green? Your thoughts?"
Absolutely. Every time I eat skittles, I have to put in ear plugs. IT's freaking insane.
Really? I always found green to be louder.
Mostly its true. If you take the amount of people per trip and the deaths which occur per trip, the amount of deaths from Aircrafts are tiny compared to car accidents. You hit it right on the nose though. The pilots, equipment and general practices associated to aircrafts are far more regulated. It would be a bit like having everyone on the road being a professional and the cars always being updated and cared for. Since this isnt really possible with cars, aircrafts will be safer for some time.
The problem with your premise is that any accident which involves a drunk driver wouldn't have happened if he wasn't drunk (or speeding) which is not always true. Now off course it is something very hard to know but let's assume i was driving and drunk and suddenly the guy before me hit the breaks like a mad man and i end up right in his buttocks , it is very probable that i would have ended up in his buttocks even if i were sober.
This said i think this is totally irrelevant. These are hasards which are part of the whole "driving" experience. And keep in mind in an accident there are often other casualties involved than just the drunken or speeding driver. In my example the drunken driver hits the non drunken driver in front of him.
I would also add that speeding does not constitute dangerous driving. It can make dangerous driving even MORE dangerous but i'm more afraid of the guy who doesn't leave any space between him and the car in front of him or the guy who never signals when he switches lanes(that one almost got me into an accident luckily he changed his mind on the last minute otherwise i would have been in his trunk so to speak).
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
You can't just throw out any data which disagrees with your point and declare it a sound argument.
Now with 57.3% more flames!
here is some statistical data from various governments and a MIT professor who studies stratistics regarding flying vs driving:
Barnett, judges the actual risk of one person being involved in a fatal airline accident, to be once every 19,000 years, provided he flew on an airliner once each day of those 19,000 years. He bases that estimate on what actually happened in the domestic U.S., during the 1990s.
"Measured in deaths per mile, American commercial airline flights are 22 times safer than car travel. More people die in three months of traffic accidents than in 40 years on commercial jets." Trevison
"In a typical three-month period, according to the airline industry, more people die on the nation’s highways than have perished in all the accidents in the history of U.S. aviation."
Formally known as Enigma
It's probably even worse when you consider that you're also more likely to be injured while driving. Since, you know, if something really bad hapens in a plane you're probably going to die as opposed to walk away with a broken arm or something. I have no data to back up my hypothesis.
Of course knowing these numbers does not at all lessen my stark terror of flying. It's a phobia thing, I have never so much as stepped on an airlplane.
I am with you on that one.
While I know it is much safer to fly, I have an extreme phobia of flying. Which is sad since my classmates are going to Thailand this year and Egypt next year for Cross Cultural Studies, and I have to live as an Amish person for 3 weeks in an Amish family for Cross Cultural since I have a strong phobia of flying.
So while my friends get to ride on elephants, go to temples, and hang out with villagers in Burma, I will be wearing an Amish dress and doiley and making lemonade from 4 am to 9 pm.
Formally known as Enigma
If you compare total miles driven to total auto fatalities and compare it to total miles flown domestically to all domestic air fatalities, the numbers are pretty similiar.
Its a 1 in 68 million chance to die in the US per mile driven.
Its a 1 in 100 million chance to die in the US per mile flown.
22 times safer is merely a result of overlooking the scale of the 2 numbers.
That's where the old industry promoted adage about safety comes from. But the catch phrase here is "deaths per mile". If you want to talk about "deaths per hour in vehicle" it's a different story. There's some official statistics on airline safety somewhere in this thread (long) about sailplane safety. But I'm not going to read through it all again. My best guess from memory is - airline flight, especially on regionals, is slightly more dangerous per hour than car travel.
http://www.aviationkb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/soaring/8382/How-dangerous-is-soaring
(Post Script: And there's also an old adage about soaring - "it's safer than the drive you took to get here to the airport". But in reality - if you're an active sailplane pilot you stand roughly a 1 in 500 chance of dying every flying season. I think that came out to 1 in 20 over a 25 year career? Or as one sailplane instructor put it, "it's bloody dangerous".