4 ms·
Per mine and per hour flying is still much safer than driving
by daedrdev 2y ago
Per mine and per hour flying is still much safer than driving
- Retric 2y agoOverall yes, but they do present non trivial medical risks for some people. Similarly, the risks for specific drivers in specific vehicles making specific trips isn’t the same as the risks for the average driver making an arbitrary trip.
- singleshot_ 2y agoRetention of agency carries a benefit you’re not calculating
- hassleblad23 2y agoYou don't have agency over other drivers on the road and they might cause an accident without any fault of yours. That issue is (almost) entirely avoided by planes.
- Retric 2y agoThough relatively rare, there’s a surprisingly long list of aircraft collisions. Just a few weeks ago an American Airlines regional jet went down near Washington, D.C.'s after hitting a helicopter.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- singleshot_ 2y agoI never thought of that! But importantly, I have the ability to see and react and avoid the collision. On the plane, I have the ability to eat lunch. Surely this could be considered a difference in agency.
- organsnyder 2y agoI can't argue that you have more agency in a personal vehicle. Agency and safety are not directly correlated, though: in fact, I'd argue that for transportation, they're often inversely related.
- organsnyder 2y agoI trust the competency of a professional pilot over my driving capabilities, even though the most serious incident I've ever had in 25 years of driving is a parking ticket. Add in all of the _other_ drivers on the road (compared to professional pilots in controlled spaces), and it's not even close.
- SpaceNoodled 2y agoOh god, there are mines?!
- steezeburger 2y agoI think he meant per Mike
- SpaceNoodled 2y agoWhy does it matter how many people are named Michael?
- niceice 2y agoAnyone know the math on how many crashes it would take until this would equalize?
- daemonologist 2y agoTo have an equivalent fatality rate per passenger-mile, you'd need about 7,500 commercial aviation fatalities in the US per year (two and a half 9/11s, ~60 fully loaded 737s). Per hour would be lower of course, maybe 1/10th as many just judging by "cruise speed." I couldn't find good hour-wise data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States#Modal_comparison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
- tzs 2y agoI don't find per mile all that useful when comparing modes of transportation for safety, because for some modes of transportation the risk of a trip doesn't really depend much on the distance. To give an extreme example, imagine someone starts passenger service from Earth to some planet in the Andromeda galaxy. Each flight carries 100 people. Once the warp field is stabilized the rest of the trip is 100% safe. However when the warp field is turned on their is a 99% chance that it will collapse rather than stabilize, which will destroy the ship and kill everyone aboard. These Andromeda flights are 5 orders of magnitude safer than commercial air travel when measures by passenger fatalities per mile.