3 ms·

We could lose an entire airliner once a month to terrorism, with everyone on board dying, and air travel would still be 100 times safer than driving a car.

• mikeash 10y ago
  No way. That would be something like 3,000 deaths per year, versus 30,000-40,000 per year for cars. Airliners do about 1/7th the passenger miles that cars do, so the fatality rate would be pretty close. It would still be a bit safer than driving, but not much. Certainly not 100 times safer.
  • rplst8 10y ago
    You have to look at total passenger-miles. Currently planes are over 1000 times safer. I think it actually might approach 10,000.
    • mikeash 10y ago
      I did: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_40.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub... For 2014, the latest year listed, airlines did 607,772 million passenger miles, highway vehicles did 4,371,706 million. The current level of safety can't be accurately measured, because airline fatalities don't happen often enough. Whatever the level is, it's far better than cars. But the hypothetical one-full-plane-crash-per-month scenario does not compare particularly favorably to cars.
      • rplst8 10y ago
        Maybe the figure was 10 times safer then. A plane carries an average of 200-300 people. One flight per month is somewhere between 2400-3600. Current highway fatalities number about 35,000. So the ten times figure works. That said, I feel like either passenger-miles figure is either too low for airlines or too high for vehicles. I remember the study I had read had them much different.
        • mikeash 10y ago
          Ten times fewer fatalities and seven times fewer passenger miles means safety is nearly the same. Not ten times better.
        • rplst8 10y ago
          Check out these charts: Injured persons by transportation mode: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_02.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub... Total Accidents by mode: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_03.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub... Rates for Air fatalities: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_09.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub... Rate for Vehicle fatalities. http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_17.html http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub... The two key numbers here I think are: Fatality Rate per 100 million vehicle-miles: 1.10 (2013) and Fatality Rate per 100 million aircraft-miles: 0.117 (2013) The 10 year averages for both of those respectively are 1.254 and 0.189.
          • mikeash 10y ago
            What's your point? These numbers agree with me. If you're still arguing that airlines would still be 100x (or 10x) safer in the face of monthly fatal crashes, these numbers do not support that at all. If you're merely arguing that airlines as they actually are today are 10x safer than driving, that is clearly true and a vast understatement, but I never said otherwise.
  • paulcole 10y ago
    There are essentially 0 non-fatal injuries in major commercial air travel. Add in the (hundreds of thousands?) of auto-related injuries and even in the scenario described, air travel is easily 100x safer.
    • mikeash 10y ago
      They said that if a full airliner were lost each month it would still be 100x safer. That is completely untrue.