JFK Jr.'s mean ol wife

"Marten Kemp" wrote in message
...
Dan Luke wrote:

"Marten Kemp" wrote:
And yes, flying is safer than driving becasue there's a *lot* smaller
probability that somebody will blow through a red light and nail you.

You believe this in spite of the fact that the fatal accident rate is
700%
higher for personal flying than for driving? Doesn't that seem like
something you might want to think about a little more?
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

Sir, can you substantiate that amazing assertion?
Citations, websites, etc?

I've heard that lot's of places. Richard Collins mentioned a similar figure
last month in his column. Perhaps more pertitent, however, is that you're
making less conservative statements about flying safety without
substantiating them. You made a ridiculous statement about flying safety,
pulled right from your ass, without substantiating it and then dive on this
guy for quoting something actually based on fact without citing a reference.
At least he's trying to keep people like you safe. I'm not sure what you're
trying to do with your rose colored bull****. If you can't manage to fly an
airplane without deluding yourself about the safety record, you shouldn't
fly.

"John Aldrich" wrote in message
...
In article , Ron
Natalie wrote:

"CurlyNJudd" wrote in message
...

I am not awake enough this morning to dissect and comment on your
stats, but
your latter comments are extremely relevant. A good pilot is safer
than a
bad driver, and I have to think that there are more genuinely bad
drivers/1000 than there are bad pilots/1000.

The problem with this argument is that everybody thinks they are a good
driver/pilot.

I think hours flown to accidents/incidents is as good an indicator as
any.

2000+hours, no accidents, no incidents.

Congratulations. That proves nothing, not even that you're a good pilot.
You've just got an N=1 statistical study going on that allows you to make
the assertion that, with very little certaintly, flying an airplane involves
less than 1 fatality per 2000 hours. Wait until you get about 50,000 hours
before bragging that you're an above average pilot based on your own
experience.

"Jonathan Birge" wrote in message
...

If you can't manage to fly an
airplane without deluding yourself about the safety record, you shouldn't
fly.

That makes sense to me.


Roger.

"Highfllyer" wrote in message
...
In my experience flying is vastly safer than driving. Sorry.

By the way, statistics are absolutely meaningless when applied to
individuals.

Two things: (1) Statistics can still be useful even though individual
variation makes them less than perfect predictors of risk. Plus, people
might as well assume they're no better than an average pilot, because half
the people will be right. (2) You may be a really ****ty driver. :-)

Ken Hornstein wrote:

In article ,
Marten Kemp wrote:
Dan Luke wrote:
You believe this in spite of the fact that the fatal accident rate is 700%
higher for personal flying than for driving? Doesn't that seem like
something you might want to think about a little more?
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

Sir, can you substantiate that amazing assertion?
Citations, websites, etc?

The statistics aren't easy to compare. But ...

From the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's report,
"2001 Annunal Assessment Of Motor Vehicle Crashes", which can be found
at the following URL:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd...2/Assess01.pdf

If you look at page 30, you can see a summary (based on year) of the
fatalities per 100 million vehicular miles travelled (VMT). For the
year 2001, passenger cars have 1.28 fatalities per 100M VMT, and
motorcycles have 33.38 fatalities per 100M VMT.

Now, the wrinkle here is that while automotive statistics are reported
in miles travelled, general aviation statistics are reported in hours
flown. For our 2001 aviation statistics, you can view them in the
Nall Report, a copy of which you can find at the following URL:

http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/02nall.pdf

Page 1 shows for 2001, there were 298 fatal accidents and 535 fatalities
for 26.2 million hours flown. The highway data is based on fatalities,
not fatal accidents, so let's use the latter figure, which gives us
2.042 fatalities per 100,000 hours flown.

So, how do we compare the two sets of data? One very simplistic way is
to pretend that everyone drives at 55 MPH, which would make automotive
statistics 1.28 fatalities per 1.82 million hours driven, or .703
fatalities per million hours driven. If you assume a slower driving
speed, the fatality rate per hour goes down, and if you assume a faster
one, it goes up. If you stick with 55 MPH, then you end up with a 29x
more times of being involved in a fatal accident with flying versus
driving.

If you compare motorcycles to aviation, 55 MPH gives you 18.3 fatalities
per million hours driven, and 1.83 fatalities per 100,000 hours drive,
which is relatively close to the statistics for aviation fatalities.

This is, of course, a very simplistic view of the accident data, and
there are lots of questions about how total hours are estimated, the
data is collected, etc etc. And I would advise anyone who was curious
about this to examine the reports themselves and draw their own
conclusions. (And it would be prudent to bring up the old Mark Twain
quote about liars, damned liars, and statisticians). But this can give
you an idea where the often-quoted statistics about GA being more
dangerous than driving, and approximately as dangerous as riding a
motorcycle, come from.

Personally, I believe that GA is definately more dangerous than
driving, but that the majority of the risk factors in GA are under the
control of the pilot. Thus, a knowledgable pilot who makes good
decisions is probably safer than the average person in a car, since in
a car (and especially in a motorcycle) you're more at the mercy of
other people. But even though every pilot receives a ton more training
than the average driver, flying is still in general more dangerous than
driving, which tells me it's important to never forget the importance
of good judgement.

--Ken

Very well, thank you all. I seem to have been operating
under a mistaken impression. {That grinding noise you hear
is my internal assumptions database rearranging itself}

-- Marten Kemp

Statistics can still be useful even though individual
variation makes them less than perfect predictors of risk. Plus, people
might as well assume they're no better than an average pilot, because half
the people will be right.

Statistics are of course most useful when they are abused. One common
technique is to deliberately confuse the difference between the mean and the
median of a data set.

"Marten Kemp" wrote:
Very well, thank you all. I seem to have been operating
under a mistaken impression. {That grinding noise you hear
is my internal assumptions database rearranging itself}

Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing the rarest of all usenet events: a
newsgroup member actually changing his opinion about something.
Mark this one for the archives and order Mr. Kemp's commemorative plaque.
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

CurlyNJudd wrote:

"Marten Kemp" wrote in message
...
Dan Luke wrote:

"Marten Kemp" wrote:
And yes, flying is safer than driving becasue there's a *lot* smaller
probability that somebody will blow through a red light and nail you.

You believe this in spite of the fact that the fatal accident rate is
700%
higher for personal flying than for driving? Doesn't that seem like
something you might want to think about a little more?
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

Sir, can you substantiate that amazing assertion?
Citations, websites, etc?

He must mean that there are 7x more accidents while flying airplanes, than
while driving them. I know, for example, that when I see a Skylane or a
Bonanza on the road, I give it a wide berth.

KEYBOARD!!!!

teege


--
-------------------------------------------------------
The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Ron Natalie wrote:

"CurlyNJudd" wrote in message ...

I am not awake enough this morning to dissect and comment on your stats, but
your latter comments are extremely relevant. A good pilot is safer than a
bad driver, and I have to think that there are more genuinely bad
drivers/1000 than there are bad pilots/1000.

The problem with this argument is that everybody thinks they are a good driver/pilot.

good pilot, I'm a good pilot, very good pilot, wapner on at 5, at 5, wapner...
wapner on at 5...

rainman
-------------------------------------------------------
The beatings will continue until morale improves.

"Marten Kemp" wrote in message
...
Ahem. I rather politely asked for substantiation for a statement that
contradicted my understanding of the situation.

That substantiation was supplied, and I now see that my understanding
of the situation was in error.

I find your statements uncalled for and offensive in the extreme, sir,
but in deference to the sensibilities of the newsgroup I shan't
subject them to the vituperation and opprobrium you so richly
deserve.

Forsooth, don't hold back on my behalf, I pray you, good knight. But I
wasn't that rude and you weren't that polite. You were more incredulous and
patronizing than polite. ("Sir, can you substantiate that amazing
assertion?") Nobody calls anybody 'sir' anymore unless it's in a
self-righteous, patronizing way (kind of how you used it above with me). And
there's no point in using vituperation and opprobrium in the same sentence
since I very much doubt you really needed to make use of the subtle
differences in their meaning, you were probably just trying to use two big
words in a sentence.

At any rate, I agree I shot back with a bit much. So, let me have it if you
got it in you. You get these things out early and often and they don't back
up and cause heart attacks later in life.

Regards,
Jonathan