Gary Drescher wrote:
Yup. There've been many threads here on this topic, and (among people who do
the research and the arithmetic) the conclusions have been in line with
yours.

Because the conclusion is correct.

Moreover, according to the Nall Report, personal (as opposed to commercial)
GA flying has about twice the fatality rate of GA flying overall.

In fact, personal flying is the most dangerous segment of GA. Even
cropdusting is safer.

On the other hand, instructional flight (solo and dual) has about half the
fatality rate of GA overall (even though the most dangerous phases of
flight--takeoff, landing, and low-altitude maneuvering--are presumably
overrepresented in instructional flight).

The same is true of self-flown business travel.

What that suggests is that flying
simple planes, maintaining proficiency, and having conservative standards
regarding weather adds up to a fatality rate that is only slightly greater
than that of driving.

If that were truly the way to go, then self-flown business travel would
be far more dangerous than personal flying - the planes are generally
faster and more complex, and the pilots generally are under pressure to
be there on time and will push weather more. But the reality is very
different.

So I would suggest that while maintaining proficiency may well be
important (those who fly for business tend to fly much more than those
who only fly for personal reasons) simple planes and conservative
standards buy you little if anything.

Let's not kid ourselves - even corporate flying, which features pilots
who fly and train a lot more and much better equipment still won't come
within a factor of two of automobiles.

And here's the real kicker - automobile fatality rates are very
unevenly distributed. The teenage kids are way overrepresented, and
the middle aged, middle class types are way underrepresented. So what
does the typical pilot profile look like?

Michael