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These are kind of statistical lies. Flying on commercial airlines is very safe but almost everyone abuses the stats to tell a false story. 1. Per hour vs per m

These are kind of statistical lies. Flying on commercial airlines is very safe but almost everyone abuses the stats to tell a false story. 1. Per hour vs per mile is a completely different stat. Every hour in a plane is possibly more dangerous than every hour driven by a cautious driver. Of course it's true that you can cover far more ground in a 500mph plane. 2. Most Americans drive a lot more than they fly so even if they were equally safe there would be far more fatalities in cars per capita. 3. You can do a lot to mitigate your chances of a fatal car accident, like choosing a safe car, practicing defensive driving, not driving in the rain, not driving drunk, not driving at night, etc. A cautious driver will have a far lower chance than the average stat. 4. Also, driving is quite scary. I can't wait for a world with computer controlled cars that rarely crash.

byoung2 8y ago
When you compare accidents by mile or by hour air travel is still much safer than driving. It is true that to drive 12,000 miles would take 12,000 hours while you can do that in 20 hours in a plane. That said you are also more than 50,000x as likely to die in a car accident. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety
- staunch 8y ago
  > When you compare accidents by mile or by hour air travel is still much safer than driving. Can you provide a citation for the per hour stat? > It is true that to drive 12,000 miles would take 12,000 hours... Uh, what? No one drives 1mph. It's just 200 hours at 60mph. > That said you are also more than 50,000x as likely to die in a car accident. Based on what stat? The wiki page said that per mile traveled it's 750x times higher. But this still doesn't address the per hour safety. Or the fact that people probably drive 1000x more than they fly or whatever the number is. It also doesn't address the main point which is that many fatal accidents involve drunk driving, etc. So your individual risk factor might be incredibly different from the average. Unlike with flying where you have almost no control over your own safety and the average is very meaningful.
  - byoung2 8y ago
    Can you provide a citation for the per hour stat? I didn't do the math before, but let's try some back of envelope math. You can estimate it based on mileage. Assuming that a car averages 50mph and a jet averages 500mph, then you spend 10x as long in a car as you do in a jet per mile flown. So if you are 750x more likely to die per mile in a car than in a plane, then you are 75x more likely to die per hour in a car than in a plane. Uh, what? No one drives 1mph. It's just 200 hours at 60mph. Yeah I accidentally pasted the 12000 where the 200 was supposed to go Or the fact that people probably drive 1000x more than they fly This is actually an interesting question. It would be very difficult to compare because there is a population that drives extensively and perhaps never flies (e.g. taxi, delivery, truck drivers), and a population that flies extensively and never drives (e.g. Wall Street banker, flight attendant, student traveler). As an example, I drive about 14k miles a year and fly about 20k (round trip to the Philippines is 14k alone and I do that every year). I can see most of the population never flying at all, in which case they drive infinitely more than they fly?
    - staunch 8y ago
      That all seems reasonable. I do think my contention that a cautious driver could probably beat the safety of an airplane is plausible but it could also be untrue. A quick look at the stats show that most fatalities involve distracted driving, speeding, drunk driving, bad weather, not using seatbelts, etc. And there's even more variables like vehicle type, speed, urban vs rural, etc. Another major factor is averaging short flights with long flights because the biggest danger for planes is in take-off and landing. 10x200 mile flights is far more dangerous than 1x2000 mile flight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/810625 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/overview-of-fatality-facts http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
      - byoung2 8y ago
        That's interesting...I was actually trying to find stats broken down by the type of driving. 10 seconds of illegal street driving or drunk driving must be many times more dangerous than dropping kids off at school or picking up grocery driving. It would be interesting to get the stats broken out by type of driving. I remember finding a government site with these kinds of stats decades ago when fighting a red light camera ticket and finding that something like 95% of red light accidents came more than 10 seconds after a light turned red, but that 95% of red light camera tickets were issued during the first 1 second after a light turned red. I ended up getting the ticket dismissed because I convinced the judge that my red light running was harmless because it was half a second after the light changed.

byoung2 8y ago

When you compare accidents by mile or by hour air travel is still much safer than driving. It is true that to drive 12,000 miles would take 12,000 hours while you can do that in 20 hours in a plane. That said you are also more than 50,000x as likely to die in a car accident. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety

staunch 8y ago
> When you compare accidents by mile or by hour air travel is still much safer than driving. Can you provide a citation for the per hour stat? > It is true that to drive 12,000 miles would take 12,000 hours... Uh, what? No one drives 1mph. It's just 200 hours at 60mph. > That said you are also more than 50,000x as likely to die in a car accident. Based on what stat? The wiki page said that per mile traveled it's 750x times higher. But this still doesn't address the per hour safety. Or the fact that people probably drive 1000x more than they fly or whatever the number is. It also doesn't address the main point which is that many fatal accidents involve drunk driving, etc. So your individual risk factor might be incredibly different from the average. Unlike with flying where you have almost no control over your own safety and the average is very meaningful.
- byoung2 8y ago
  Can you provide a citation for the per hour stat? I didn't do the math before, but let's try some back of envelope math. You can estimate it based on mileage. Assuming that a car averages 50mph and a jet averages 500mph, then you spend 10x as long in a car as you do in a jet per mile flown. So if you are 750x more likely to die per mile in a car than in a plane, then you are 75x more likely to die per hour in a car than in a plane. Uh, what? No one drives 1mph. It's just 200 hours at 60mph. Yeah I accidentally pasted the 12000 where the 200 was supposed to go Or the fact that people probably drive 1000x more than they fly This is actually an interesting question. It would be very difficult to compare because there is a population that drives extensively and perhaps never flies (e.g. taxi, delivery, truck drivers), and a population that flies extensively and never drives (e.g. Wall Street banker, flight attendant, student traveler). As an example, I drive about 14k miles a year and fly about 20k (round trip to the Philippines is 14k alone and I do that every year). I can see most of the population never flying at all, in which case they drive infinitely more than they fly?
  - staunch 8y ago
    That all seems reasonable. I do think my contention that a cautious driver could probably beat the safety of an airplane is plausible but it could also be untrue. A quick look at the stats show that most fatalities involve distracted driving, speeding, drunk driving, bad weather, not using seatbelts, etc. And there's even more variables like vehicle type, speed, urban vs rural, etc. Another major factor is averaging short flights with long flights because the biggest danger for planes is in take-off and landing. 10x200 mile flights is far more dangerous than 1x2000 mile flight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/810625 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/overview-of-fatality-facts http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
    - byoung2 8y ago
      That's interesting...I was actually trying to find stats broken down by the type of driving. 10 seconds of illegal street driving or drunk driving must be many times more dangerous than dropping kids off at school or picking up grocery driving. It would be interesting to get the stats broken out by type of driving. I remember finding a government site with these kinds of stats decades ago when fighting a red light camera ticket and finding that something like 95% of red light accidents came more than 10 seconds after a light turned red, but that 95% of red light camera tickets were issued during the first 1 second after a light turned red. I ended up getting the ticket dismissed because I convinced the judge that my red light running was harmless because it was half a second after the light changed.