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I tried to find the stats on this and haven't found the right ones yet. There are odds of dying in a lifetime, which is flawed because people drive more than th
by tunesmith 10y ago
I tried to find the stats on this and haven't found the right ones yet. There are odds of dying in a lifetime, which is flawed because people drive more than they fly. There's also deaths per mile, which isn't right because planes go faster than cars. It seems that what people care about is what is the probability of dying in a time period of engaging in the activity?
Are there stats for driver-deaths-per-time-spent-driving? It'd also be interesting if it could be broken down to driver-deaths that 100% clearly weren't the driver's fault. I wonder how that compares to deaths-per-time-flying (via a major carrier). Or probability of death.
Best I could find is the micromort wikipedia page [1] - apparently to spend one micromort, you can drive 230 miles, fly 1000 miles, or train 6000 miles. Looked at that way, you're burning micromorts at a faster hourly rate on the plane, so according to that it's riskier if you squint your eyes just so.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Nition 10y agoHmm. If I'm reading that page right myself, then if you travel 1000 miles in a car there's ~4.3 times as much risk of death than if you travelled in a plane instead. So if a plane travels at least 4.3 times as FAST as a car on average, then your risk over time in a plane could be higher. I think your post makes a good point in general. Way too often, people compare statistics that don't consider major factors like how often people drive vs. fly.
- deelowe 10y agoCouldn't you just divide the deaths per mile by the typical speed of an airplane or car to normalize the data?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rtpg 10y agoThat's probably a good first approximation, genuinely wonder about how accurate it gets. How many people die in LA gridlock? If your driving experience is "hours moving at 5mph", and your flying is "lots of shaking", easy to get scared of one. As someone who has developed a fear of flying (I still fly because I'm not taking a boat but...), one small thing that scares me is looking at plane wings in flight. A lot of bending, and a lot of parts that look old. On one flight I could see a piece of rubber stuck on the rudder , that seemed to slowly get more worn out as the rudder moved up and down. I'm sure it was by design, but at the time, I was legitimately scared. EDIT: it was a flap, not a rudder
- astrodust 10y agoModern aircraft have engineering tolerances that are absolutely absurd: http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/g2428/7-airplane-wing-stress-tests/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/g2428/7-airplane-wing... The shake and wobble in wings is by design. If they didn't flex they'd shatter.
- sp332 10y agoPeople have a place they want to go when they travel, so deaths per passenger mile is much more relevant than deaths per hour. Otherwise you could reduce your risk of being in a car accident by driving really fast and spending less time driving!
- toast0 10y agoWhen you go to visit someone or to an event, the place is fixed. When you plan a vacation, travel time is a factor (certainly not the only one)