Ron Wanttaja writes:

No. Their accident rate is less than that of Cessna 172s manufactured
over the same time period.

But there are far more Cessna 172s actually flying. About 43,000 of them have
been built, and more than 26,000 are still registered.

In 2009, there were 23 Cirrus accidents, vs. 3699 aircraft registered as
of January 2010. There were 3003 Cessna 172s on the registry that had
been manufactured since production restarted in the '90s. The NTSB
accident listing for 2009 shows 23 Cessna 172S models and four 172R models.

Cirrus: 23/3699 = 0.62%

New-Production 172s: 27/3003 = 0.89%

Why are you counting only new-production Cessna 172s? What about the other
26,000 Cessna 172s that are still flying?

If all Cessna 172s in service are compared to all Cirrus aircraft in service,
then the accident rate for Cirrus aircraft is about ten times greater than
that of Cessna 172s.