GA _is_ safer than some modes of transport. Was: Tragedy

"BDS" wrote in message
.. .

"Paul Stuart" wrote

And, although I've not been posting to this group long, I've learned
enouigh already to observe that you have no hope of elucidating any
kind of "reasonable debate" from Skylune.

He's only here to push buttons and further his own agenda. You can bet
that
some of the postings from this group will be used in town meetings as
evidence of how dangerous that airport that is near his house is so he can
gain ground to shut it down. All this just because he thinks his rights
supercede the rights of anyone else. The only way to get rid of this
moron
is to stop validating his posts by responding to them.

To buy into this, you first have to believe that he/she is actually an adult
property owner...

Me, I'm not so sure...

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
AZ Cloudbusters
Chandler, AZ

Stefan wrote:

Comparing aviation and pedestrians by looking at the accident rate per
mile is sheer nonsense.

Why? The idea is to compare accidents to the value accrued from the travel.
Ignoring "fun" (as it's tough to quantity whether we're speaking of flying,
biking, etc.), why isn't "distance" a good metric for value?

- Andrew

"How dangerous is flying? There are 16 fatal accidents per million hours
of general aviation.

Where did that number come from?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Kyle Boatright wrote:


If you eliminate the *stupid* fatalities in GA, my guess is the risk goes
down by 1/2.

same for motorcycling...

Stupid includes VFR into IMC, Fuel Starvation, and low altitude
maneuvering.

too fast, no helmet & protective clothing, "watch this" etc.

Stupid pilots are their own worst enemies and flying is
notoriously unforgiving of stupidity.

I own a motorcycle and I have taken numerous flights with GA-aircraft as
a passenger. Both offer great pleasure and involve a risk that can be
influenced but not eliminated.

regards,
Friedrich

--
for personal email please remove 'entfernen' from my adress

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:aJx5f.444290$x96.189556@attbi_s72...
"How dangerous is flying? There are 16 fatal accidents per million hours
of general aviation.

Where did that number come from?

According to the Nall Report, the actual number is 11 or 12 fatal accidents
per million hours of GA flights (averaging just under two deaths per fatal
accident).

--Gary

In round numbers, there are about 200 million licensed drivers in the
USA, so a rate of 1-in-2000 would result in about 100,000 individuals
being involved in a fatal accident each year. There are actually about
40,000 fatal automobile accidents per year in the USA, with something
like 42,000 people killed. If you include licensed drivers who are
involved in these crashes but who are not killed (say, those driving
the other vehicle, or those who are passengers) and if you correct for
non-active drivers (whatever that means!) you won't be as far from the
100,000 figure as you would at first think. Now, this isn't a very
indicative metric, as hours flown or miles traveled are far more useful
than elapsed time, but it shows that you should be a little careful
before you make assumptions about these things...

Jim Logajan wrote:
[2] "Cross Modal Safety Comparisons"
http://www.atsb.gov.au/aviation/rese...ross_modal.cfm

Sorry folks - this above link worked last night for me, but now I get a 404
error. Fortunately the following two links work:

http://www.atsb.gov.au/pdfs/cross_modal.pdf

or he

http://www.atsb.gov.au/road/statistics/cross_modal.aspx

"Paul Stuart" wrote:
Thanks for the interesting statistics that compare GA favorably to
other "recreational" type modes of transport.

You're welcome.

I'd be interested to
see a comparison with horse riding, which I suspect has actually got a
pretty bad accident rate, although not many people would think of it
that way.

I'd like to see numbers on recreational boating included. According to the
ATSB, "The ATSB intends to update and augment this paper (eg to include
marine and the results of comments on this paper) as future data becomes
available." ( http://www.atsb.gov.au/road/statistics/cross_modal.aspx )

So maybe some day they'll include more transport modes.

And, although I've not been posting to this group long, I've learned
enouigh already to observe that you have no hope of elucidating any
kind of "reasonable debate" from Skylune.

My intent of posting was to bring what I thought was fascinating
information to newsgroup readers - debating Skylune was accidental. When
Skylune posted his assertion, I was actually expecting to find out he was
correct - the notion that GA is more dangerous than automobile and
commercial airline travel is well known. But I had a hunch that
recreational boating might be almost as dangerous as GA, so I went
searching for that. Haven't found any stats on boating, but did stumble
across the motorcycling angle and went looking for that and eventually
found the cross modal studies.

"stupid" is made up of all the things that you would -=never=- do, but
that other people do. It is decided by other people, after the accident
caused by what =you= did.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Stefan wrote:
Jim Logajan wrote:

What is fascinating about the Australian study are some of the
normalized numbers in Appendix A showing that even bicyclists and
pedestrians are are greater risk by some measures than GA flyers:

Comparing aviation and pedestrians by looking at the accident rate per
mile is sheer nonsense.

Maybe - can you explain why it is nonsense?

Compare it by the hour and it looks a lot differently.

Okay - compare Table 4, column 2 (fatalities/100 million passenger
kilometres) with Table 4, column 5 (fatalities/million passenger hours)
in http://www.atsb.gov.au/road/statistics/cross_modal.aspx

In column 2, the rate is ~2.5 times greater for pedestrians while in
column 5, the rate is ~2 times greater for GA. Looks different, as you
say.

But: the inversion that occurs when comparing the two metrics, and the
less than one order of magnitude difference, suggests that the difference
in risks between GA and walking may be inconsequential. Why? Because no
inversion of risk exists between GA and _any other of the other transport
modes_ when going from column 2 to column 5. GA is either always more
dangerous to a greater or lessor degree, or always less dangerous (in the
case of motorcycling).

You can bias the results at your will by defining what
you compare. (I'm working enough with statistics to know how to treat
the results.)

Sure, you can change the magnitudes, but you can't always change the
comparative ordering. I also think it is a stretch to say you can bias at
will. For example, just how would you go about biasing the fatality rates
for "High Capacity RPT" in the ATSB study? They are all zero!

Actually, the most dangerous thing in aviation is the attitude of some
pilots that aviation is not dangerous.

No argument.