Safety, yet again...

"Jay Honeck" wrote in news:1145761231.603449.52800
@t31g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Snipola
Does anyone know how to extract the "stupid pilot trick" fatalities
(I.E.: Running out of gas; Flying into terrain; Buzzing your
girlfriend's house; etc.) from this statistic?

At first glance, you have a point. But then, how many of the auto
accidents are due to "stupid driver tricks"? Showing off to your
buddies, racing the car next to you, driving while putting on
makeup, late for work....

Also, could there be "stupid pilot tricks" in the other categories
as well?

If you remove stupidity from one category, you'd have to remove
it from all of them. Then, you'd have a new piece of information,
the ratio of how many stupid idiots there are in each category.

I wonder which has more? GA or cars? I'll bet its cars by a long
shot.

Brian
--
http://www.skywise711.com - Lasers, Seismology, Astronomy, Skepticism
Seismic FAQ: http://www.skywise711.com/SeismicFAQ/SeismicFAQ.html
Quake "predictions": http://www.skywise711.com/quakes/EQDB/index.html
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

If you remove stupidity from one category, you'd have to remove
it from all of them. Then, you'd have a new piece of information,
the ratio of how many stupid idiots there are in each category.

Well, true enough. But "stupid pilot tricks" are not usually fatal if
they occur in a car.

For example, running out of gas in your Subaru is an inconvenience.
Running out of gas in your Cessna is probably going to bend metal -- or
kill you.

Squealing your tires in front of your girl friend's house might get you
a ticket. Buzzing your girl friend's house might get you killed. And
so on...

I guess the point is that flying is far less forgiving of "stupid
tricks" than driving. Extracting them from both sets of statistics
therefore WON'T result in a straight line, equivalent change of fatal
incidents.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in news:1145762260.574792.162910
@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com:

Snipola
I guess the point is that flying is far less forgiving of "stupid
tricks" than driving.

Very true....no disagreement from me.


Extracting them from both sets of statistics
therefore WON'T result in a straight line, equivalent change of fatal
incidents.

But maybe that's worth showing? The information could be used
to show new pilots the importance of proper flying. Goof around
in a car, and you might be ok. Goof around in a plane, and you
might be dead.

Brian
--
http://www.skywise711.com - Lasers, Seismology, Astronomy, Skepticism
Seismic FAQ: http://www.skywise711.com/SeismicFAQ/SeismicFAQ.html
Quake "predictions": http://www.skywise711.com/quakes/EQDB/index.html
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

"Jay Honeck" wrote:
If you remove stupidity from one category, you'd have to remove
it from all of them. Then, you'd have a new piece of information,
the ratio of how many stupid idiots there are in each category.

Well, true enough. But "stupid pilot tricks" are not usually fatal if
they occur in a car.

For example, running out of gas in your Subaru is an inconvenience.
Running out of gas in your Cessna is probably going to bend metal -- or
kill you.

Squealing your tires in front of your girl friend's house might get you
a ticket. Buzzing your girl friend's house might get you killed. And
so on...

I guess the point is that flying is far less forgiving of "stupid
tricks" than driving. Extracting them from both sets of statistics
therefore WON'T result in a straight line, equivalent change of fatal
incidents.

But he's talking about removing only the stupid-drver-trick *accidents*, not
all the stupid drver tricks.

I suspect that if one removes all the fatal stupid-drver-trick accidents
from the record, one would have very few fatal accidents left.

This is not apples-to-apples, of course: in flying, one has less exposure to
risk of death from to the stupidity of other pilots than one does to the
stupidity of other drivers while driving.

Nevertheless, I believe you are making a grave error in attempting to
reassure yourself that you are beating the odds. Private GA flying is
dangerous; more dangerous than driving by two orders of magnitude, according
to the NTSB statistics you posted. That disparity is so huge I don't see
how you can convince yourself that you can reduce it to equality in your own
flying. If you do manage to believe this you are living in a dream world, a
dangerous place for a pilot.

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

Nevertheless, I believe you are making a grave error in attempting to
reassure yourself that you are beating the odds. Private GA flying is
dangerous; more dangerous than driving by two orders of magnitude, according
to the NTSB statistics you posted. That disparity is so huge I don't see
how you can convince yourself that you can reduce it to equality in your own
flying. If you do manage to believe this you are living in a dream world, a
dangerous place for a pilot.

I never said ANYTHING about wanting to reduce my risk to that of
driving. In fact, I am already more than satisifed that flying is as
safe as I can make it, and worth the risk. I wouldn't commit aviation
over 100 times per year if I thought it weren't worth the risks.

But I would like to extract, if possible, all the stupid stuff that I
don't, won't or can't do from the accident statistics. Unfortunately,
there appears to be no way to do that.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in news:1145762260.574792.162910
@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com:

snip

I guess the point is that flying is far less forgiving of "stupid
tricks" than driving. Extracting them from both sets of statistics
therefore WON'T result in a straight line, equivalent change of fatal
incidents.

Yeah, but the point is also that flying is far less forgiving of _ANY_
exception than driving.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
Which is safer flying or driving?

Fatalities per million trips Odds of being
killed on a single trip:
Airliner (Part 121) 0.019
52.6 million to 1
Automobile 0.130
7.6 million to 1
Commuter Airline (Part 135 scheduled) 1.72 581,395 to
1
Commuter Plane (Part 135 - Air taxi on demand) 6.10 163,934 to 1
General Aviation (Part 91) 13.3
73,187 to 1


Part 91 includes business aviation as well as recreational/personal flying.
BusAv is several times (x ?) safer than recreationa/personal flying. You can
break BusAv out into Corporate Avaition, with a couple ATP's flying a G5,
and into ownerflown singles (call it BusAv and CorpAv).

IIRC, CorpAv is even safer than Part 135 ???


--
Matt
---------------------
Matthew W. Barrow
Site-Fill Homes, LLC.
Montrose, CO

Does anyone know how to extract the "stupid pilot trick" fatalities
(I.E.: Running out of gas; Flying into terrain; Buzzing your
girlfriend's house; etc.) from this statistic?

If I got caught buzzing my girlfriend's house, it wouldn't be an
aviation fatality. My wife would murder me!

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
Which is safer flying or driving?

Fatalities per million trips Odds of being
killed on a single trip:
Airliner (Part 121) 0.019
52.6 million to 1
Automobile 0.130
7.6 million to 1
Commuter Airline (Part 135 scheduled) 1.72 581,395 to
1
Commuter Plane (Part 135 - Air taxi on demand) 6.10 163,934 to 1
General Aviation (Part 91) 13.3
73,187 to 1




Actually, Jay, it does not look that bad. There are a lot of GA accidents
that are not applicable to your envelope of operation, even BEFORE you take
out the stupidity factor.

I took a couple of hours and looked at the fatalities in the NTSB database
just for 2006 for GA and "non-commercial" operations.

The analysis is done by hand, and quickly, so there may be an error in the
count of a couple here or there but it is probably pretty close.

Of the total fatalities (130), there are probably less than 40 that apply to
the sort of flying that you claim to do. So you should be able to multiply
the safety probability by more than 4 (or reduce your risk by a factor of
more than 4.... maybe something closer to 300,000 to 1).



The "cause" categories, below, are strictly MY OWN inference based on the
factual or preliminary NTSB report, since none of these accidents have an
"official" cause determined as of yet. The categories are *exclusive"... no
fatality appears in more than one category... IE: an helicopter doing
photography will show up in "Helicopters" and NOT in "Low level work".


Total: 130

Helicopters: 23
IFR and IMC: 23
Probable VFR into IMC: 7
VFR at night: 8

Takeoff from unprepared surface: 1
Hand-propping: 1
Aerobatics involved immediately befo 5
Testing new aircraft/installation: 1
Low level "work" (spraying, photography, etc.): 11


Mid-air collision: 3
Training: 1
Non-work Low level manoeuvres/stupidity: 5

Engine failu 8

Yet to be explained, Experimental: 3
Yet to be explained, certified: 16
Yet to be explained, large: 14 (3 accidents)

The last category, the 14 fatalities are the result of only 3 accidents
involving larger aircraft.
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...08X00173&key=1 involved 6 in
a Beech 200 upon landing after a rather bizarre go-around.
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...02X00149&key=1 involved 4 in
a Citation jet landing, and ,
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...03X00158&key=1 was 4 in a
business twin, also related to landing.

....and in spite of protestations from the group, IFR in IMC appears to be a
dangerous activity for GA.

Of the total fatalities (130), there are probably less than 40 that apply to
the sort of flying that you claim to do. So you should be able to multiply
the safety probability by more than 4 (or reduce your risk by a factor of
more than 4.... maybe something closer to 300,000 to 1).

False.

You can't just change the numerator, you must also look at the
denominator - that is, you need to then remove all the non-accident
flights outside the envelope.

Simple example - assume that 10% of the pilots are female. There are
312 accidents, and they happen to be distributed 10% female, 90% male.

If you're female, are you really ten times safer because you can
discount the 90% of male accidents?

Jose
--
The price of freedom is... well... freedom.
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