(Apologies to Jim; I'm snipping quite a bit of his excellent posting and
quoting him a bit out of order.)

Jim Logajan wrote:

Still, it might be reasonably argued that when a Lancair aircraft is
involved in an accident, it has a higher probability of yielding fatalities
than other aircraft. Consider:

[Snip]

When I entered "Lancair Legacy" in the Make/Model field out of 11 matching
records 7 of them involved fatalities. The 63% value seems even more
unusual. But the accident count is a small number, so may be misleading.

[Snip]

[2] By comparison, from 1-1-1962 to present and entering "701" in
Make/Model and setting "Amateur Built" to Yes yielded 27 records for
the Zenith CH 701 aircraft. Only one of those records involved
fatalities. Only 4% of accidents involved fatalities.

The problem is separating the "This is due to the aircraft being a
Lancair" issues from the "This is a high-performance aircraft" ones.
The survivability of an accident is dependent on a huge number of
factors, but a big one is the speed involved. Energy is equal to the
mass times the velocity squared.

Obviously a Zenair undershooting and hitting the trees at 35 knots is
going to be MUCH more survivable than a Lancair hitting the same trees
at 80. The fatality rate *might* be the same, if a Zenair hit the trees
at 80, but there's no way to make a fair comparison.

One can certainly argue that the Zenair's ability to slow down makes it
a safer airplane. But then, if one wants performance at the HIGH end,
one usually has to give up somewhat at the low-end range. TANSTAAFL.

A better comparison would be that of planes of similar high-end
performance... Lancairs, Glasairs, and RV-8s, for instance.

I took a quick look at my database (which covers Jan 1999 through Dec.
2006). The results were practically a wash...36% of two-seat Lancair
accidents were fatal, vs. about 40% of Glasairs. RV-8s were right
between at 38%.

Digging a little more, RV-6s were at about 26%, RANS (all models) were
34%, Avid Flyers (all models) were 10%, and Zenairs (all models) were
22%. For anyone keeping score, about 30% of first-flight accidents kill
the pilot.

(Yes - I know the entered keywords may not find all relevant records, but
I'm assuming the missed records have similar proportions of fatal to total
accidents as the matching records.)

Welcome to my world. :-)

If the fractions are not typical, could it be because Lancair
incidents/non-fatal "accidents" aren't reported as often as for other
makes?

I would suspect the opposite. Lancairs are expensive airplanes. Bet
the vast majority of the owners have insurance, and the insurer probably
won't pay off if the accident isn't reported to the FAA. They're also
complex aircraft, which means it's tougher to just pull up with a
trailer and haul off the wreckage before the FAA gets there. Been known
to happen, locally...

Ron Wanttaja