planes vs cycles

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?

"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?

GA accident and fatality statistics can be found in the ASF's Nall Report:
http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/03nall.pdf .

--Gary

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?

"PaulH" wrote in message
om...
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?

Is the 125mph a pirooma number? Is that a fair estimate of GA aircraft
average speed?

"Greg" wrote in message
...
"PaulH" wrote in message
om...
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?

Is the 125mph a pirooma number? Is that a fair estimate of GA aircraft
average speed?

Good point. Does that include corporate aviation?

GA would be Cubs at 75MPH up to turboprops (ignoring the corporate big iron)
at 300MPH.

Tom Sixkiller opined

"Greg" wrote in message
...
"PaulH" wrote in message
om...
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?

Is the 125mph a pirooma number? Is that a fair estimate of GA aircraft
average speed?

Good point. Does that include corporate aviation?

GA would be Cubs at 75MPH up to turboprops (ignoring the corporate big iron)
at 300MPH.

GA also includes helicopters. Break them out, and GA would look a lot better.
The real question, to my mind, is what is the figure for SE piston aircraft?


-ash
Cthulhu for President!
Why vote for a lesser evil?

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:

http://www.bts.dot.gov/publications/...003/index.html

As others have pointed out, you can compare risk using a number of
approaches. For example, if you consider GA and motorcycles to be
simply a mode of transportation, you would probably compare fatality
rates per passenger-mile. This yields the following:

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.

You can also look at it by vehicle-miles.

General Aviation 0.122 / million aircraft-miles
Motorcycles 0.341 / million vehicle-miles

If you consider both to be forms of recreation, then time might be a
better basis, using vehicle hours, or passenger-hours. These numbers
are readily available for GA, (2.2 fatalities / 100,000 flight-hours or
0.75 / 100,000 passenger-hours) but one would have to either estimate an
average speed for a motorcycle, or dig through the data to calculate the
numbers.

For argument's sake, if you assume an average speed of 25 mph for a
motorcycle, then the rate would be 0.14 / 100,000 vehicle-hours, or 0.12
per 100,000 passenger-hours. This would make motorcycles 6 times safer
than GA as a form of recreation.

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?

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.

And where does GA stop? Does it include biz jets? I think what most of
us would like to know is the hazard of *lightplanes" perhaps defined
as single-engine recips. I don't suppose there are enough P-51s around
to skew the numbers.

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
...
What do the same statistics say about GA and automobiles?



This keeps popping up but in the end, any transportation system is only as
safe as it's operators make it. You can make aviation very safe or very
dangerous and the same goes for driving and cycling. However, on the roads
your safety is more dependant on others than in aviation.

A few days ago I was rear ended while driving my Accord at 35 on a local
main road. The lady who hit me was driving a large SUV at around 55 and
said she wasn't looking when she hit me. They are going over my car now but
it may very well be totalled (I was extremely lucky and was not injured).
In my experience driving seems obvoiusly more dangerous than aviation
especially when you figure in the experience and competence of the other
operators.

"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...


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?

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.

Really? Most cars I see on the highway are empty, but our plane is usually
2 or 3 people (sometimes 5 or 6).

Could the airports install PlanePool lanes? Or maybe ATC could give priority
to planes with two or more people aboard.