How safe is it, really?

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:01:51 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:


"Peronal Flying" (from Nall Report)
Hours 47% of light GA
Fatal Accidents 72% of light GA
Fatal Rate: 2.65/100,000hrs.

I was curious how this number matches with driving, and on a per miles
basis. I didn't see any statistics for automobile accidents on the
NTSB website, but I found a website that listed the deaths per
vehicle-km.
http://www.bast.de/htdocs/fachthemen...glish/we2.html

Guesstimating that the average GA plane flies 140mph.
Fatal accident rate = 2.65 / 14M miles -or- 1 fatal accident per 5.3M
miles

The webpage above lists 9.4people killed per billion vehicle-kms.
Converting to miles yields: 9.4 per 625M miles -or- 1 per 41M miles.

Since the car statistics are 'people' killed per mile, and not fatal
accident numbers per mile, the car numbers are actually better than 1
fatal accident per 41M miles. Since most vehicles are operated solo,
the factor is probably 2, but is obviously higher than 1.

-Nathan