planes vs cycles

Cub Driver wrote:

General Aviation 0.036 / million passenger-miles
Motorcycles 0.309 / million passenger-miles

Making GA about 9 times safer than motorcycles to get from one place to
another.

Another shibboleth ruined!

What do the same statistics say about GA and automobiles?

Automobiles 0.021 / million passenger-miles

Making the fatality rate 70% higher per passenger-mile for GA.

Of course, as posted earlier, it really should be *driver*-miles, not
passenger-miles, since automobiles likely carry more people on average
than GA aircraft.

That is why I also quoted the numbers for vehicle-miles in my earlier
post -- One vehicle, one driver.

Beyond that, the average occupancy of automobiles is typically quoted as
about 1.6 people per vehicle. In General Aviation, as defined by the
FAA, occupancy is a bit over 3 per aircraft.

And where does GA stop? Does it include biz jets?

Yes, which are considered quite safe.

I think what most of us would like to know is the hazard of
*lightplanes" perhaps defined as single-engine recips.

Single engine piston aircraft contribute 60% of all aircraft hours.
Turbojets contribute about 10%, with rotorcraft (7$), turboprops (7%),
and experimentals (5%) contributing most of the rest.

Single engine recips would likely contribute less than 60% of the
passenger-miles, considering the higher speed and greater capacity of
most turboprops and turbojets. Recips probably are involved in more
than their share of all fatal accidents. That suggests that a safety
comparison of small piston aircraft to automobiles on a passenger-mile
basis would be worse than shown above for all GA activity.

"James Robinson" wrote in message
...
PaulH wrote:

Thank you for the link. The report shows for GA overall 1.33 fatal
accidents per 100,000 hours in 2002. If we use an average speed of
125 mph, we have 1.33 fatal accidents for 12.5 million miles.

Anybody have motorcycle data?

Much information is available in this report:


I'm not sure how anyone came to making this comparison, but I've been riding
for 35 years and I can tell you that i doesn't take nuch cockpit time to
determine that flying exposes you to less danger than riding. Now, if 30,000
other people started flying 10 feet away while phoning, eating, reading,
sleeping, etc. things would clearly change. But for the basic premise, you
don't even need the stats.

But for the basic premise, you
don't even need the stats.

Well, the stats do help, because they often contradict basic premises.

For example, the driver of a Toyota Avalon (also Accord, Camry, even
Civic) is much less likely to die in a million miles than is the
driver of the biggest, baddest SUV or light truck on the road.

Now, it doesn't necessarily follow that you will save your life if you
switch from an Escalade to an Avalon. It is very clear, looking at the
range of automobiles and light trucks, that the more likely the thang
is to be driven by a young man, the more dangerous it is to its
driver. I have not seen many University of New Hampshire students in
Avalons.


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
Viva Bush! weblog www.vivabush.org

"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

Peter Duniho wrote:

"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?

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.

Agreed. Here's one comparison based on number of fatalities per million
hours spent in a variety of activities (incl. GA and motorcycling):
http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/comparat.html

Obviously distance travelled is a key issue and I do understand the need for
an 'apples and apples' comparison. However, in the UK we have been
averaging 18 GA accidents a year (which icludes higher risk types such as
autogyros and balloons) compared to a steady 3,500 deaths a year through
road traffic accidents. Only a serious statistician could make any
meaningfull comparisons from these different forms of transport but I do
think that things should be kept into perspective. i.e. if you are
concerned about accidental death where could your efforts save the most
lives GA or car?

Andy



"Peter" wrote in message
...
Peter Duniho wrote:

"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?

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.

Agreed. Here's one comparison based on number of fatalities per million
hours spent in a variety of activities (incl. GA and motorcycling):
http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/comparat.html

I of course refer to the average of 18 fatal accidents each year - there of
course many more non fatal ones!

"Andy Fogg" wrote in message
...
Obviously distance travelled is a key issue and I do understand the need
for
an 'apples and apples' comparison. However, in the UK we have been
averaging 18 GA accidents a year (which icludes higher risk types such as
autogyros and balloons) compared to a steady 3,500 deaths a year through
road traffic accidents. Only a serious statistician could make any
meaningfull comparisons from these different forms of transport but I do
think that things should be kept into perspective. i.e. if you are
concerned about accidental death where could your efforts save the most
lives GA or car?

Andy



"Peter" wrote in message
...
Peter Duniho wrote:

"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?

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.

Agreed. Here's one comparison based on number of fatalities per million
hours spent in a variety of activities (incl. GA and motorcycling):
http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/comparat.html

"Andy Fogg" wrote in message
...
Obviously distance travelled is a key issue and I do understand the need
for
an 'apples and apples' comparison. However, in the UK we have been
averaging 18 GA accidents a year (which icludes higher risk types such as
autogyros and balloons) compared to a steady 3,500 deaths a year through
road traffic accidents.

Those are absolute rates. They are meaningless without considering the
exposure to the risk. Which, of course, is what this entire thread is
about, basically.

18 fatal GA accidents per year would be a very big problem if there were
only 18 GA flights each year.


Only a serious statistician could make any
meaningfull comparisons from these different forms of transport but I do
think that things should be kept into perspective. i.e. if you are
concerned about accidental death where could your efforts save the most
lives GA or car?

It depends on who you are. If you are a person who will never fly in an
airplane, but who spends a lot of time on the highway, you will invest your
efforts in saving lives in cars. If you fly more than you drive, you
probably care more about GA fatal accidents.

The question isn't about where should safety measures be implemented. It's
about relative comparison of safety for various activities (motorcycling and
flying, in particular).

The analysis is, of course, very different if you're a person in charge of
public policy rule-making and budget-writing where you have to decide where
to invest your efforts. But that's an entirely different conversation than
the one we're having here.

Pete

The usual method for comparing the safety of automobiles is *drivers*
killed per million miles driven. (The Toyota Avalon is the safest
automobile, BTW.) That eliminates the skewing you get with passengers,
for example when comparing Dodge Caravans with Mazda Miatas.

Strikes me this would also be the only fair way to compare a
motorcycle and a lightplane.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
Viva Bush! weblog www.vivabush.org

"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...
Strikes me this would also be the only fair way to compare a
motorcycle and a lightplane.

It is fair if all you care about is the risk to the pilot.

It is not fair if you care about whether passengers survive. Just because a
vehicle carries more passengers, that doesn't mean it's unfair to take that
into account when comparing safety.

For example, personally, I think it's very relevant that an airline jet
might be carrying 100-300 passengers (depending on type) when it crashes.
They crash a lot less often, but when they do, they kill a lot more people
at once. That's not a fact you can just ignore, IMHO. (Of course, even
with this characteristic is taken into account, airliners are still way
safer than little planes).

Pete