On Sep 8, 2:12*pm, Gary Evans wrote:

Does this mean we can't use the "safer than driving to the airport"
anymore?

My apologies in advance if I am taking that question more seriously
than intended.

It might have been true in the 1950s when there were a fraction of the
cars that there are now, but about 50,000 people were dying on US
highways every year. But I think that today it is very far from the
case, and has been for a while. Here's an interesting chart of road
deaths per mile; it shows the steep decline through the last 90 years:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/201...ties-declined/

It would be interesting to put together corresponding charts for
glider flying. However, the individual metrics of hours, miles, and
flight cycles would probably not tell the whole story. It would take
several charts to compare fatalities with hours of exposure and cycles
of exposure for different types of flying (training, local flights,
cross-country, competition) to get a good picture of what is going on.
And my understanding is that it is hard to get reliable metrics for
numbers of cycles and hours; it is not something that is tracked well.

What I generally tell people is that flying gliders is about as
dangerous as riding motorcycles. The comparison is actually not all
that good, but it is in the ballpark on several levels and is the best
thing that comes easily to hand.

Thanks, Bob K.