I have personally never liked being blankly told that flying is safer than driving, because I’d like to understand how safe flying is versus driving when something goes wrong.
I never liked the line of reasoning that driving is more dangerous than flying, and therefore people shouldn't be afraid of flying. It's flawed reasoning. It doesn't take into account the actual reasons people are afraid of flying and not of driving.
Sure, statistically more people die in car accidents. True. But each one of us has some measure of control over that. We all believe (even if erroneously) that we can avoid this because we control the wheel, and we can choose to pay close attention to the road and make good decisions and we trust in our own ability to avoid an accident.
In a plane, there is nothing we can do but pray. The outcome is in the hands of pilot and we can do nothing. And that's what's terrifying: not statistics, but helplessness.
Indeed, when I get in the car as a passenger with a young driver who I haven't driven with before, my misgivings are definitely greater than those I have getting on a plane. Same principle.
Flying is much safer then driving, but that a statement based on real statistics. However, a large number of people have an irrational fear of flying vs driving. That’s the point.
If you look at statistics of deaths per 100,000 per year (for example), yes, flying is safer than driving. But if you look at the likelihood of death per hour, driving and flying are equally as safe.
Flying is actually much more dangerous than driving. The risk is to destroy the environment that sustains life on earth. This does not even compare with the risk of a car or plane accident.
Well just about everyone other than Pilots spends a lot more of their life driving than flying, which is still irrelevant to which is the safer mode of transportation. When you boil it down, you're still saying "Going somewhere is more dangerous than not going somewhere."
flying is not safer than driving- unless you drive 500 miles with 150 other people every time you get in the car- statistics are massaged, and I think risk of accident per journey is better (and is higher in flying)
Driving is statistically FAR more dangerous than flying though.
Think about it, you are hurtling along a highway at 70 mph in a car with numerous components that are aging and can break catastrophically. All it takes is a tire blow-out and your car flips. Or the overweight truck driver in the lane behind you has a heart attack and his truck crushes your car like a soda can. Or a vehicle traveling 70 mph in the opposing lane loses control and flies across the median, hitting your car and killing you instantly before you even have time to react.
Meanwhile, the airplane covers that same distance in a fraction of the time and has not one, but two pilots, with numerous years of experience. If one of the pilots has a heart attack, the other one can take over. There are almost no vehicles on the road with that level of redundancy.
I liken it to people who are afraid to fly because “it’s dangerous”. Have issues with flights happened? Yes. Is it still drastically safer than the alternatives (driving)? Yes.
Statistically, flying is far safer than driving (apologies for not having boating data). The numbers are a few years old, but a quick search dug up the following:
You can’t make this blanket statement and I would bet on average it’s the opposite still.
- Flying in the US is on average ~750x safer per mile than driving according to 2000-2010 data (it’s likely even larger a difference in the modern era).
- I would venture to guess that most US flights are in the 1000-2000 mile range and most US car trips are easily more than the equivalent 2-3 miles.
- Most fatalities from flying occur during takeoff and landing, so longer flights are actually safer per mile. Relating this back to the thread, the risk of catastrophic failure from your choice (or non-choice) of airframe only really affects the off-ground danger and not the higher danger you face on a taxiway/runway.
- All of these numbers are based purely on fatalities but I’m guessing your definition of “safety” includes being maimed or otherwise seriously injured. You have several orders of magnitude higher chance of being seriously injured in a car crash compared to flying since accidents in aviation are much more likely to end in death.
I am pretty sure that you can avoid risks during driving but cannot avoid risks when flying commercially.
"Flying is safer than driving" claim probably comes from some metric that is relevant to insurance companies when calculating premiums but irrelevant to private travellers because they can choose not do drive drunk or take risks.
Flying is statistically much safer than driving. They may not ensure quality in many of their amenities, but their safety standards are as high as they come.
Who cares? The age-old comparison against cars is just to illustrate that flying, on average, is safer than driving, which most people intuitively don’t “feel” to be true (or at least they didn’t back in the days).
In this case we’re talking about a company that consistently makes mistakes and puts their passengers lives at risk due to negligence, whether “it’s still safer than driving” or not is completely irrelevant, because what they’re doing is not OK no matter how much safer it is than driving.
You can't make decisions for other drivers though. There is no FAA-like organization making sure all the other drivers on the road are as safe and responsible as the people operating your airliner.
The claim that "flying is safer than driving" is based on fatalities/mile traveled.
Being passenger on a commercial flight is much safer than driving a car. Fooling around in a Cessna is about an order of magnitude more dangerous than driving a car.
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