Stefan wrote:
Jim Logajan wrote:

What is fascinating about the Australian study are some of the
normalized numbers in Appendix A showing that even bicyclists and
pedestrians are are greater risk by some measures than GA flyers:

Comparing aviation and pedestrians by looking at the accident rate per
mile is sheer nonsense.

Maybe - can you explain why it is nonsense?

Compare it by the hour and it looks a lot differently.

Okay - compare Table 4, column 2 (fatalities/100 million passenger
kilometres) with Table 4, column 5 (fatalities/million passenger hours)
in http://www.atsb.gov.au/road/statistics/cross_modal.aspx

In column 2, the rate is ~2.5 times greater for pedestrians while in
column 5, the rate is ~2 times greater for GA. Looks different, as you
say.

But: the inversion that occurs when comparing the two metrics, and the
less than one order of magnitude difference, suggests that the difference
in risks between GA and walking may be inconsequential. Why? Because no
inversion of risk exists between GA and _any other of the other transport
modes_ when going from column 2 to column 5. GA is either always more
dangerous to a greater or lessor degree, or always less dangerous (in the
case of motorcycling).

You can bias the results at your will by defining what
you compare. (I'm working enough with statistics to know how to treat
the results.)

Sure, you can change the magnitudes, but you can't always change the
comparative ordering. I also think it is a stretch to say you can bias at
will. For example, just how would you go about biasing the fatality rates
for "High Capacity RPT" in the ATSB study? They are all zero!

Actually, the most dangerous thing in aviation is the attitude of some
pilots that aviation is not dangerous.

No argument.