"Captain Wubba" wrote in message
om...


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*.

One of my statistics profs in college was fond of saying, "If you torture
the data long enough, eventually it will confess to anything."

It might be that for an IFR pilot to go up and putter around in a 172 for an
hour or two on a nice VFR day is safer than the proverbial drive to the
airport. If he invites a friend to come along, he could reasonably answer
the "how safe is it" question, "safer than the drive to the airport." It is,
on that flight.

But the OP's question was basically, "is my husbnad going to kill himself in
an airplane one of these days." If he does, odds are it isn't going to be on
a sunny Saturday morning. But if his flying contains a mix of conditions,
we'd need to take into account all the types of flying he does. And then you
get into the game of whether a pilot who flies regular IFR is safer because
he's more skilled and able to handle bad conditions, or more likely to get
killed because he "tempts fate" by flying approaches in minimums and such
more often. Guys who fly the bush in Alaska are tremendous airmen but
they're still far more likely to get killed flying a plane than a weekend
hamburger-fetcher in Connecticut.

So rather than falling down the rabbit hole, you look at the gross average,
which by its nature weights for all the possibilities. Imperfectly, to be
sure, as all statistical measures are. But it is by far more valid for
forecasting purposes than picking-and-choosing at every level.

-cwk.