"Peter" wrote in message
...
Gary Drescher wrote:
The standard reference for small-plane safety statistics is the Air
Safety Foundation's Nall Report
(http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/03nall.pdf). As far as I know,
there are no good statistics about the safety of new pilots vs.
more-experienced pilots.

That report includes the statement that "ASF studies have shown that low
pilot time in type is often a significant contributing factor in
accidents." But I didn't see any specific data there to back it up.

Yup. Plus, low time in type is different from being recently licensed as a
pilot.

The accompanying chart plots a histogram of accidents vs. PIC hours of
experience but unfortunately doesn't normalize it to the number of pilots
in each band and the number of hours flown by them.

Yup. Paul Craig's book The Killing Zone has the same problem. Without
normalization, the data tell us nothing about how safety might vary as a
function of experience.

--Gary