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It is true that you control your fate more when driving. Once the door shuts on the plane you have little ability to do anything other than get yourself arreste
by mattmaroon 3y ago
It is true that you control your fate more when driving. Once the door shuts on the plane you have little ability to do anything other than get yourself arrested.
That’s part of WHY air travel is safer.
- bmitc 3y agoI like to consider what is safer when something goes wromg. Are there statistics that track this across different modes of travel?
- rightbyte 3y agoYour car won't fall out of the sky in the event of a malfunction so I guess cars are safer "when something goes wrong"? Then again cars travel with less margin of error to other cars and objects than airplanes.
- thfuran 3y agoAn airplane falling out the sky is something like the equivalent of the wheels falling off of a car traveling at speed. It's not that it can't happen, but it's hardly the only possible result of a malfunction.
- cereal_cable 3y agoThere's also a giant speed difference plus the fact that a car will decelerate even if uncontrollably for basically any mechanical failure. Even at speed vehicle accidents are quite safe comparatively to a plane that has lost its ability to fly. A plane tends to have all or nothing incidents while vehicles have lots of accidents with a wide variety of severity. Naturally that tends to push aviation towards avoidance of mechanical issues and on cars we are much more tolerant. I've seen people driving cars with their door duck taped on!
- TylerE 3y agoYes. Airplanes are literally hundreds of times less likely to kill you per mile than cars. There has not been a single US airline fatality since 2009.
- ixs 3y agoSouthwest 1380 would like a word with you. Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 was a Boeing 737-700 that experienced an uncontained engine failure[a] in the left CFM56-7B engine after departing from New York–LaGuardia Airport en route to Dallas Love Field on April 17, 2018. […] One passenger was partially ejected from the aircraft and sustained fatal injuries[…] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_13...
- vladms 3y agoBased on this https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-carriers/ https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca... between 2009 and 2021 there were indeed 2. I think that the point stands, it is very impressive and safe.
- bmitc 3y agoWikipedia says 51. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_accidents_and_... The numbers would go up quite a bit if it included private and military. The numbers you linked to seem to have a very tight definition of which flights were considered, as the Wikipedia list showcases several more in-flight deaths involving air carrier class airplanes than just two.
- nodamage 3y agoI don't understand how you arrived at the number 51. Did you just tally up all the incidents in that list that occurred after 2009? That list includes a bunch of incidents that are not really relevant for assessing risk level when flying on a commercial airline: - Someone committing suicide by getting sucked into a plane engine while the plane was on the ground. - Someone sneaking onto a runway and getting struck by a plane that was landing. - Another person stealing a plane and intentionally crashing it into the ground. - The Kobe Bryant helicopter crash. Looking through the list I would conclude the parent comment was correct. The only incidents with passenger fatalities on US airlines since 2009 were Southwest 1380 and PenAir 3296.