Gently extracted from the mind of jim rosinski;


"Gary L. Drescher" wrote

Rather than per hour, perhaps a more fair metric would be "fatality
rate per effective distance traveled". Even in my slow Cessna 172 a
good rule of thumb is that I can get from point A to point B about 3
times faster than driving. On safety grounds alone, it might tip the
balance in favor of GA over driving.

It doesn't, though. If you do a google search for the previous threads
here on this topic, you'll find data that has been cited to support the
conclusion that the fatality rate per hour is around 15 times greater for
GA, and per mile it's around 8 times greater for GA. By either measure, GA
is roughly an order of magnitude more dangerous.

OK thanks for the stats, sobering though they might be. But: consider
that planes generally get from A to B in more of a straight line than
cars (thus my words "per effective distance traveled" quoted above and
the factor of 8 you cite becomes more like 4 or 5. Then the fact that
a 172 is statistically one of the safest planes around, and maybe
we're talking close to a wash in safety between driving and flying?

I'm not too sure about that. GA includes turbine aircraft. And they are highly
utilized with safety records comparable to commercial aviation.

What is not clear to me is the real risks of my flying a few hundred miles in
a 172 versus driving to the same destination. Or for that matter, 10hrs of
local flying vs 10hrs of scuba diving vrs 10hrs of x-country skiing vrs 10hs
on a motorcycle or some other outdoor hobby.

-ash
for assistance dial MYCROFTXXX