3 ms·

The best statistic will account for exposure. Also look at fatalities per 100 million miles traveled over the past few decades: incredible reductions!

melling 7y ago
“The number of deaths per passenger-mile on commercial airlines in the United States between 2000 and 2010 was about 0.2 deaths per 10 billion passenger-miles.[1][2] For driving, the rate was 150 per 10 billion vehicle-miles for 2000 : 750 times higher per mile than for flying in a commercial airplane” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Commercial airlines are generally used for long distance trips so they'll naturally rack up more miles between deaths. You'd see the same thing if you compared freight haulers like Swift, Schneider and Walmart to companies that do a lot of local delivery. Commercial airlines are also flown by a professional crew instead of the public making the utility of the comparison limited at best.
- Retric 7y ago
  Commercial Aviation is the equivalent of US buses which have a dramatically better safety record. School buses for example are about 70x as safe as driving your kids to school. The vastly more deadly general aviation compares more closely with the automotive fatality rates. GA has 16 fatal accidents per million hours, that’s horrific.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  And the first number is primarily because of 911. It would be closer to 0.0 if not.
ghaff 7y ago
>best statistic It depends on what you're trying to do. On the other hand, there are a lot of injuries and fatalities in an absolute sense (or relative to most other types of accidents) so it's certainly worthwhile to do things that reduce those numbers. On the other hand, the accident rate is really quite low already. So any technology or policies have to deal with an already pretty low base rate--which, as you say, has already been reduced significantly over time. There isn't much in the way of low-hanging fruit.

melling 7y ago

“The number of deaths per passenger-mile on commercial airlines in the United States between 2000 and 2010 was about 0.2 deaths per 10 billion passenger-miles.[1][2] For driving, the rate was 150 per 10 billion vehicle-miles for 2000 : 750 times higher per mile than for flying in a commercial airplane” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Commercial airlines are generally used for long distance trips so they'll naturally rack up more miles between deaths. You'd see the same thing if you compared freight haulers like Swift, Schneider and Walmart to companies that do a lot of local delivery. Commercial airlines are also flown by a professional crew instead of the public making the utility of the comparison limited at best.
Retric 7y ago
Commercial Aviation is the equivalent of US buses which have a dramatically better safety record. School buses for example are about 70x as safe as driving your kids to school. The vastly more deadly general aviation compares more closely with the automotive fatality rates. GA has 16 fatal accidents per million hours, that’s horrific.
Aperocky 7y ago
And the first number is primarily because of 911. It would be closer to 0.0 if not.

ghaff 7y ago

>best statistic It depends on what you're trying to do. On the other hand, there are a lot of injuries and fatalities in an absolute sense (or relative to most other types of accidents) so it's certainly worthwhile to do things that reduce those numbers. On the other hand, the accident rate is really quite low already. So any technology or policies have to deal with an already pretty low base rate--which, as you say, has already been reduced significantly over time. There isn't much in the way of low-hanging fruit.