How safe is it, really?

"Richard Russell" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 16:59:51 GMT, "C Kingsbury"
wrote:

mean it that way. I don't think that women are inherently worse
drivers than men, but the one's that fit that description are deadly.

Actually on the whole women have a better record than men by a non-trivial
amount, primarily because they are less likely to drive recklessly. Though I
would still stay far away from that minivan.

Point is, I don't feel like I'm in anywhere near that level of danger
when I fly. The reason is that I don't have to deal with all of those
people that are trying to kill me.

It's basically true- on a bike death is rarely more than a few seconds away.
In a plane this is only true during certain phases of takeoff or landing. If
you're alert you have a better chance of stopping an accident sequence
before it runs its course.

-cwk.

Why am I using the composite automobile numbers when highway numbers
are much higher (more dangerous)? Why am I using *any* set of numbers?
If we can pick and chose the numbers we want, we can 'prove' virtually
anything. It made the most sense to me, when comparing 'travel by car'
to 'travel by GA plane' to use the figures for *all* cars vs. *all* GA
planes.

Please feel free to break out 'self-piloted' GA numbers from the total
number of hours, the total number of deaths and the total number of
injuries if you so wish...but when you analyse the question 'Will you
be safer on a 1000 mile trip if you travel by car or by GA airplane?'
*Even if* you use the '50% higher' figures you want to use, you will
STILL find that

If 'safety' = 'probability of arriving at your destination without
injury or death', then travel by GA plane (personal flying), is
*still* safer than travel by car.

If 'safety' = 'probability of not getting killed before reaching your
destination', then travel by car is safer than travel by GA (personal
flying).

It depends on which definition you want to use. What is 'safe'? Just
for giggles, I asked that question ("Which of these two definitions
would you personally use in determeing if something was safe or not?")
to 8 non-aviator co-workers today. 6 of them said 'Injured or killed'
(which favors GA) and 2 of them said 'killed' (which favors cars).

The numbers don't lie tho...to say that aviation is 'less safe' than
car travel, one has to use a particular definition of 'safe'. You may
feel it is the 'better' definition. I don't.

Cheers,

Cap


"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message link.net...
Let's look at the 'miles per incident' rates for various events:

Event Automobile Plane
--------------------------------------------------------
Deaths 36,837,209 8,029,030
Injuries 495,000 1,742,969
Accidents 251,429 2,614,453
Total Casualties 488,437 1,432,087




Now, from these statistics, it is pretty clear that your chances of
dying in a GA plane are significantly higher (per mile) than in an
automobile. But they are both quite low.

But, your chances of being a 'casualty' (being injured *or* killed) is
*much* greater in a car than in an airplane. There is one casualty for
every 488,000 miles in a car...only one for every 1,432,000 miles in a
GA plane. Additionally, you are *10 times* as likely to be in a car
wreck (again per mile) than in a plane wreck. But again, they are
still pretty low.


Why are you using the composite light GA numbers when personal flying has an
accident rate 50% higher?

Mike
MU-2

"Michael" wrote in message
om...
"Mike Rapoport" wrote

It seems to me like most pilots here are in denial about the true
risks of what they are doing. I also believe this is the primary
reason we have the product liability climate in GA that we do.

There have been lots of lawsuits against aircraft and component
manufacturers by grieving widows and orphans.

As there have been against companies which do bungee-jumping, parachuting,
hang gliding, mountain climbing, deep-sea fishing, and a million other
activities which any logical person can see require taking risks which can
cause death. "Well, we're going to tie a rubber band around your ankles and
throw you off a bridge."

What it comes down to is acceptance of responsibility. Not a century ago it
was a rare family that hadn't lost one or more young children to disease by
the age of ten and if you survived that there were wars, workplace
accidents, railroad crashes, ships sinking, and a long list of now-routine
illnesses that meant certain death. Today when someone dies in their sixties
we say "so young" and the loss of a child is an agony beyond conception.

We understand everything. We dig tunnels thirty miles long under oceans and
dam rivers to make lakes the size of small countries. We cut peoples' chests
open, stop their hearts to replace a valve or four as if it were just
another engine, and administer a shock to start it all running again.
Satellites a hundred miles above the Earth send images which have turned the
most devastating storms into mere incoveniences. The temperature of the
polar ice cap is three degrees higher than normal? Clearly we are burning
too much fossil fuel!

When an airliner crashes, we suck up five million little bits off the ocean
floor and put it all back together. It takes a year or two, but then a man
in glasses gets up before a screen, and shows a film which explains exactly
what happened. "Here, you see, these indents the size of a dime show where a
cross-member hit, consistent with our theory that a spark in the tank caused
an explosion."

And none of this progress is illusory. The tunnels do not collapse and fill
with water. The patient gets out of bed and three weeks later resumes
hosting his late-night talk show and likely watches his grandchildren
graduate from high school. Airline travel has become safer than driving a
car. Hurricanes in the US regularly cause tens of billions in damage yet
kill hardly any. Men fly, the sick are healed, and oracles predict the
future from their perch in the sky. Have we not become the gods of our own
existence?

The only thing we don't believe in is the unpreventable accident. When
someone dies of cancer, the family sues the doctor for not finding it
sooner. When someone dies in a car crash, the automaker is sued because a
properly-designed car should allow the driver to survive rolling off the
road at sixty miles an hour. Every accident happens for a reason, and since
we know airplanes run out of gas, shouldn't we design ones that can't?

Believe me, the problem runs far deeper than a misplaced belief in the
safety of small planes.

-cwk.

Carnivorous, eh?

"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
online.com...
C Kingsbury wrote:

I'm with Mike on this. Flying is higher risk than gardening.

You've not seen the weeds in my garden.

- Andrew

"C Kingsbury" wrote in message
nk.net...

"Michael" wrote in message
om...
"Mike Rapoport" wrote

"Well, we're going to tie a rubber band around your ankles and
throw you off a bridge."


You make is sound like a crazy thing to do!

Mike
MU-2

I would say safety is a function of surviving the trip! Your last numbers
showed a fatal accident rate for aircraft 4.6 time greater than for autos on
a per mile basis. Looking at another set of numbers for autos, the NTSB
shows a rate of 1.48 fatal accidents/100 million miles. Converting the NTSB
data for GA to miles (assuming 125kts and 1.15 sm/nm) we get 9.46 fatals/100
million miles and as I pointed out earlier, this number understates the risk
for light GA personal flying by a factor of two. The overwhelming majority
of auto injuries are minor, some are not even noticed before the ambulance
chaser suggest them. If you rephrased the question including the fact that
the flying is 12 times as likely to result in death but the auto has a
higher chance of minor injury, I doubt if anyone would consider flying to be
safer.

Mike
MU-2




"Captain Wubba" wrote in message
om...
Why am I using the composite automobile numbers when highway numbers
are much higher (more dangerous)? Why am I using *any* set of numbers?
If we can pick and chose the numbers we want, we can 'prove' virtually
anything. It made the most sense to me, when comparing 'travel by car'
to 'travel by GA plane' to use the figures for *all* cars vs. *all* GA
planes.

Please feel free to break out 'self-piloted' GA numbers from the total
number of hours, the total number of deaths and the total number of
injuries if you so wish...but when you analyse the question 'Will you
be safer on a 1000 mile trip if you travel by car or by GA airplane?'
*Even if* you use the '50% higher' figures you want to use, you will
STILL find that

If 'safety' = 'probability of arriving at your destination without
injury or death', then travel by GA plane (personal flying), is
*still* safer than travel by car.

If 'safety' = 'probability of not getting killed before reaching your
destination', then travel by car is safer than travel by GA (personal
flying).

It depends on which definition you want to use. What is 'safe'? Just
for giggles, I asked that question ("Which of these two definitions
would you personally use in determeing if something was safe or not?")
to 8 non-aviator co-workers today. 6 of them said 'Injured or killed'
(which favors GA) and 2 of them said 'killed' (which favors cars).

The numbers don't lie tho...to say that aviation is 'less safe' than
car travel, one has to use a particular definition of 'safe'. You may
feel it is the 'better' definition. I don't.

Cheers,

Cap


"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
link.net...
Let's look at the 'miles per incident' rates for various events:

Event Automobile Plane
--------------------------------------------------------
Deaths 36,837,209 8,029,030
Injuries 495,000 1,742,969
Accidents 251,429 2,614,453
Total Casualties 488,437 1,432,087




Now, from these statistics, it is pretty clear that your chances of
dying in a GA plane are significantly higher (per mile) than in an
automobile. But they are both quite low.

But, your chances of being a 'casualty' (being injured *or* killed) is
*much* greater in a car than in an airplane. There is one casualty for
every 488,000 miles in a car...only one for every 1,432,000 miles in a
GA plane. Additionally, you are *10 times* as likely to be in a car
wreck (again per mile) than in a plane wreck. But again, they are
still pretty low.


Why are you using the composite light GA numbers when personal flying has
an
accident rate 50% higher?

Mike
MU-2

"Captain Wubba" wrote in message
om...

It made the most sense to me, when comparing 'travel by car'
to 'travel by GA plane' to use the figures for *all* cars vs. *all* GA
planes.

Except that it doesn't, really. A 500-hour pilot flying an Arrow and two
ATPs cuing the FMS on a Gulfstream V are about as different as a wheelbarrow
and a submarine. Even owner-flown jets and turboprops rarely match the
safety record of profesionally-crewed flights in the same equipment. The
data are unambiguous on this point.

It depends on which definition you want to use. What is 'safe'? Just
for giggles, I asked that question ("Which of these two definitions
would you personally use in determeing if something was safe or not?")
to 8 non-aviator co-workers today. 6 of them said 'Injured or killed'
(which favors GA) and 2 of them said 'killed' (which favors cars).

As any exit pollster will tell you, how people answer the question is
largely determined by how you ask it.

Try asking the question this way: "Activity A is three times more likely to
cause you an injury than Activity B. Activity B is four and a half times
more likely to kill you than Activity A. Which sounds like the safer
activity?"

Another problem is that you're not weighting for the severity of injury.
Breaking an arm and being paralyzed from the neck down are thus being
counted the same. Without knowing this breakdown we can only guess at what's
going on.

The numbers don't lie tho...to say that aviation is 'less safe' than
car travel, one has to use a particular definition of 'safe'. You may
feel it is the 'better' definition. I don't.

By your own tortured numbers you are 4.5 times as likely to die in a plane
crash as a car crash. QED.

-cwk.

Morgans wrote:
"Back_To_Flying" wrote
Ok, unlike you I have done some research on this then . Driving is the
leading cause of death for American drivers between 15 - 20 years of age.
Stating an argument like that, shows you have little to no grasp of
statistics.

Everyone (nearly) drives. Everyone does not fly.

Well over 90% of all deaths occur in bed. Seems to be the single
most dangerous place to be.

Stay away from them ! ;o)

Cheers CV

Recently, C Kingsbury posted:
(largely snipped for brevity)

The only thing we don't believe in is the unpreventable accident. When
someone dies of cancer, the family sues the doctor for not finding it
sooner. When someone dies in a car crash, the automaker is sued
because a properly-designed car should allow the driver to survive
rolling off the road at sixty miles an hour. Every accident happens
for a reason, and since we know airplanes run out of gas, shouldn't
we design ones that can't?

Believe me, the problem runs far deeper than a misplaced belief in the
safety of small planes.

A most excellent summary of the "modern human's" state of mind. Thanks for
posting this!

Neil

"C Kingsbury" wrote in message link.net...
"Captain Wubba" wrote in message
om...

It made the most sense to me, when comparing 'travel by car'
to 'travel by GA plane' to use the figures for *all* cars vs. *all* GA
planes.

Except that it doesn't, really. A 500-hour pilot flying an Arrow and two
ATPs cuing the FMS on a Gulfstream V are about as different as a wheelbarrow
and a submarine. Even owner-flown jets and turboprops rarely match the
safety record of profesionally-crewed flights in the same equipment. The
data are unambiguous on this point.

Indeed. And since we are comparing 'autos' to 'GA Airplanes', then if
you are going to start teasing out certain components from one side to
make the data appear a certain way, then we need to tease the data out
from the other side as well. Highway travel, for instance, is
significantly more deadly than local driving. So...do you want to
tease out 'car trips over 200 miles' and compare them to 'plane trips
over 200 miles'? How about 'Plane trips over 200 miles flown by pilots
over 25 years of age' versus 'car trips over 200 miles made by....'
You want to talk 'wheelbarrows' and 'submarines'? Then it is equally
unfair to use auto statistics that include 100 drivers driving 2 miles
to the video store each way and back and comparing that to a Mooney
driver flying a 400 mile XC in hard IFR at night. And when you start
teasing out all the possible permutations, the data really becomes
meaningless. Is it *really* useful to know that travelling 300 miles
at night in the Southwest US during October, you are 3.16 times more
likely to be injured in a car than in an airplane?

I'm not arguing that professionally flown aircraft are safer.
Professionally driven cars are safer too. But even increasing the
accident, injury, and death per hour rates by 50%, you *still* find
that by using GA (even owner-flown) you are *still* more likely to
arrive at your destination without a scratch (i.e. without being
injured or killed) than if you take that same trip by car.


It depends on which definition you want to use. What is 'safe'? Just
for giggles, I asked that question ("Which of these two definitions
would you personally use in determeing if something was safe or not?")
to 8 non-aviator co-workers today. 6 of them said 'Injured or killed'
(which favors GA) and 2 of them said 'killed' (which favors cars).

As any exit pollster will tell you, how people answer the question is
largely determined by how you ask it.

Try asking the question this way: "Activity A is three times more likely to
cause you an injury than Activity B. Activity B is four and a half times
more likely to kill you than Activity A. Which sounds like the safer
activity?"

Indeed. And I can ask the exact same question a different way and get
a different response. I understand what and agree with what you are
saying.


Another problem is that you're not weighting for the severity of injury.
Breaking an arm and being paralyzed from the neck down are thus being
counted the same. Without knowing this breakdown we can only guess at what's
going on.

The numbers don't lie tho...to say that aviation is 'less safe' than
car travel, one has to use a particular definition of 'safe'. You may
feel it is the 'better' definition. I don't.

By your own tortured numbers you are 4.5 times as likely to die in a plane
crash as a car crash. QED.

Well, that isn't quite 'true' The liklihood of dying in any event is
proportional to the time spend performing it. But basically you are
right...and you are 4 times more likely to be injured per mile while
driving a car than flying. But to have a 'serious' (i.e. 10%)
probability of dying in *either*, one would have to spent several
*years* doing either as a full time job. And in aviation, it's been
very clearly shown that low-time pilots (under 350 hours) have a
*vastly* higher accident and death rate than more experienced pilots
(See "The Killing Zone", by Paul A. Craig), then the more you fly, the
lower your odds per mile traveled of dying becomes. I doubt that is
the case withd riving, but I don't know.

This issue is harder to get a hold of than some people seem to think.
It is *not* as simple as just saying 'GA aviation is more dangerous
than driving' It is *provable* that if you define 'more dangerous' as
'more likely to experience injury or death', then GA is actually
clearly *safer* than driving. if you define 'more dangerous' as 'more
likely to experience death', then GA travel is clearly *more
dangerous*.

Cheers,

Cap





-cwk.