On HN recommendation, a couple of years ago I read "Beyond the Black Box: The Forensics of Airplane Crashes" by George Bibel. It's a book-length survey, from a

On HN recommendation, a couple of years ago I read "Beyond the Black Box: The Forensics of Airplane Crashes" by George Bibel. It's a book-length survey, from an engineering point of view, of the processes that cause crashes, and how they are tracked down and their root cause addressed. One of the messages of the book, repeated several times at various places, is that most crashes are survivable. Even the crashes that result in total loss of the aircraft tend to have significant numbers of survivors. One number from the Kindle preview is that, of the 53K passengers and crew on the 568 accidents on U.S. commercial craft from 1983-2000, there were 2280 fatalities (4.3%). This includes "severe turbulence" incidents as well as total-loss incidents, contributing to the low 4.3% figure. But still, over the same time period, of those 568 accidents, there were 26 "serious" accidents involving 2739 people, and about 55% of them survived. 19 of the accidents had some survivors, 7 did not. Of the 19, 66% of casualties were from trauma. Which would indicate that wearing the seat belt is a very good idea. The book has more statistics and breakdowns that point in a similar direction.