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Your numbers look sound. But to make a not especially important but still interesting pedantic point: There’s an argument that instead of passenger-miles, most
by mercutio2 7y ago
Your numbers look sound. But to make a not especially important but still interesting pedantic point:
There’s an argument that instead of passenger-miles, most people’s intuitive sense of transportation danger is actually based on passenger-hours, not passenger-miles, which makes buses and trains look better.
But I completely agree with your fundamental point that air travel is incredibly safe!
- mikeash 7y agoI’m not sure if I care about people’s intuition on this. Measuring by hour is plainly stupid. If people really do evaluate it that way, it’s an interesting bit of psychology, but irrelevant to actual safety.
- mercutio2 7y agoHmm. I wouldn’t quite go as far as stupid. The argument is that humans, in the aggregate, don’t choose trips exclusively based on passenger miles; they (often, though not always) think about how many hours they’re willing to devote to travel. If cheap air travel availability as a mode induces people to travel 10x more passenger miles, in a world where airlines were only as safe per passenger mile as cars, there would be a net reduction in public health. But we don’t live in that world; planes are better in safety when measuring by passenger hour than cars, so in fact we’ve improved public health.