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Fatalities per trip is similarly misleading because of the number of extremely short trips people make in cars. If you really start including risk factors you'

Fatalities per trip is similarly misleading because of the number of extremely short trips people make in cars. If you really start including risk factors you'll never stop, the risk is proportional to many other factors as well: 1) Time of day: Time of day factors in probably for both flying and driving at varying degrees 2) Where: In the US, which state you're driving in matters significantly for driving fatality rates 3) Day of week: Driving on weekends is more dangerous than driving during the week, doesn't seem to affect flights 4) ATC is a variable for flight accidents but not drivers 5) Flights might actually carry more risk per mile in certain situations: Flying over the oceans, eg A truly correct apples-to-apples comparison would be so hyper-specific as to be useless.

DrScientist 2y ago
The other key point when comparing car stats to flights is car stats include pedestrian/cyclist and motorcyclist deaths which make up perhaps around half of the deaths. Yet I suspect the people in twin towers weren't included in airline death stats. Sure there isn't a perfect single metric - just pointing out that the one the airlines prefer appears to be biased towards air-travel. The other factor that is often ignored is the issue of control. As a passenger of an airline you have very little impact on the chance of an accident - you are just an accident statistic. Whereas if you are driving, your own driving behaviour, choice of car, route etc puts you more in control of the chances ( though of course by no means completely ). This has a big impact on the perception of risk ( as more than average think they are better than average :-) ).