4 ms·

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.

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.

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.