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It's an imperfect comparison yes. We're never given the whole picture, only comparing by miles traveled where of course airplanes go a lot further on each trip.
by tremendo 13y ago
It's an imperfect comparison yes. We're never given the whole picture, only comparing by miles traveled where of course airplanes go a lot further on each trip. I'd like to see a comparison by time spent on each type of vehicle, or by number of trips, where a lot of drivers make multiple trips every single day and their number of flights would be only a fraction of a percent of that. Not to mention the intuition that a plane crash would certainly result in death, whereas in a car crash you may have a much better chance of survival and recovery.
It would be just as "unfair" to compare driving against crop-dust pilots, which seem to more frequently end up in a crash.
- Someone 13y ago"Not to mention the intuition that a plane crash would certainly result in death" That intuition is somewhat wrong, depending on how you define 'crash'. http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetystudies/SR0101.pdf http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetystudies/SR0101.pdf table 2, shows 53,487 passengers involved in accidents, with 2,280 fatalities. Table 3 limits that to more serious accidents. There, of 2,739 passengers, 1,215 died, over half due to impact wounds. Yes, a jet nosediving into hard rock will kill everybody on board, but one making a very rough 'landing' near first aid units? Not something to volunteer for, but not certain death, either.
- mikeash 13y agoYou'd think this would be fairly obvious coming so soon after a high-profile crash in San Francisco which killed only three people out of nearly 300.