"PaulH" wrote in message
m...
I've seen statements in various aviation chat rooms that the GA
accident rate is similar to that of motorcycles, but have never seen
the actual statistics. Is this GA overall? Accidents per hour or per
mile? Incidents or fatalities?

Gary already provided a reference for aviation statistics. You can find
motorcycle statistics on the NHTSA web site, and probably some other
government sites (seems like I came across a "US Bureau of Statistics" web
site). I don't recall the URLs off the top of my head (though the NHTSA is
probably www.nhtsa.gov) but last time I went looking for this stuff, it was
very easy to find using Google.

I'll just add that it's important to keep in mind that it's very difficult
to make "apples to apples" comparisons. You need to decide whether you're
going to compare miles, time, or number of trips, and whether you're going
to do those comparisons using the vehicle count or the passenger count.

Invariably, someone will disagree with your choice, so you just have to pick
the one that you think is relevant to you. Also, "GA" encompasses a wide
range of operations, from corporate aviation (very safe) to water bombing
fires (not very safe). Even within the "four seater lightplane recreational
flying" category, different types have varying safety records, affected by
"typical mission", landing speed, crash survivability, and the like.

With all that variability, you also need to decide what "similar" means to
you. Some people will say that as long as the accident rates are about the
same order of magnitude, they are similar. Other people will say that they
are only similar if they are within 10% of each other.

Anyway, it's my opinion, having looked at the various accidents rates
myself, that motorcycles and light airplanes have similar fatality rates,
while automobiles are somewhat better. Generally speaking, the fatal
accident rate seems to have more to do with how easily one can survive a
crash in a particular kind of vehicle than it does with how often accidents
actually happen.

Finally, keep in mind that with motor vehicles, for every accident that
involves more than one vehicle, most of the time one of the operators of the
vehicles had no way to avoid the accident, it being caused by the operator
of the other vehicle. In aviation, airplane accidents almost always involve
just one occupied aircraft. In my opinion, this makes a given accident rate
effectively "less worrisome", since as the pilot I have more control over my
destiny. That doesn't necessarily make me *safer*, but it makes me
*happier*.

Pete