Safety: Planes vs Bikes

alank wrote:
On page 12 of 72 of the below listed Recent Trends in Fatal Motorcycle
Crashes -

"In 2004, motorcycles made up nearly 2.4 percent of all registered vehicles
in the United States and accounted for only 0.3 percent of all vehicle miles
traveled. In comparison, motorcycle riders accounted for 5.3 percent of
total traffic fatalities in 1995 and have increased to 9.4 percent of the
total traffic fatalities in 2004. Per 100,000 registered vehicles, the
fatality rate for motorcycle riders (69.33) in 2004 was 4.6 times the
fatality rate for passenger car occupants (15.05). Per vehicle mile traveled
in 2004, motorcycle riders (39.89) were about 34 times more likely than
passenger car occupants (1.18) to die in a motor vehicle traffic crash."

So, motorcycle riders are 34 times more likely to die per mile then in a
car. I believe the analysis on GA to cars is about 6 to 8 times more
likely. Looks like there is your answer.

Also, have you noticed how the general public freaks out over GA, however
they don't seem even seem to worry to much if at all when they go bicycle
riding or boating, which combined has about 3 times the fatalities as GA
does.

But not when the number of participants is taken into account. Here
are some more statistics on risk per hour of various recreational and
other activities:
http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/comparat.html
[Note that per hour is usually more appropriate for such dissimilar
activities than per mile since it would be rare that one would be
trying to decide whether to go to a given destination by plane or by
waterski or bicycle, but it would be reasonable to consider spending a
few hours on a Sunday afternoon on any of the three activites.]
Both GA and motorcycling come out rather high on this table whereas
bicycling and waterskiing have a much more moderate risk level.

But note that even the relatively high risk shown for GA is still
rather modest. Based on that figure, an individual who spent an hour
*every day* for their entire life in a private plane would still be
more likely to eventually die of some unrelated cause than in a plane
crash.