"tony roberts" wrote in message
news:nospam-18FE4D.23023319102005@shawnews...
Okay, you statistic gurus, figure this out for me, please?

If, say, I end up flying 4000 hours in my flying life, using your figures
(above), what are my odd of dying in a fatal crash?

1 in 25

Is it possible for you to factor out accidents caused by fuel starvation,
flying into IMC, and flying at night? If so, what are my odds then?

Greatly improved.

I don't think so. Fuel starvation and weather account for only a small
percentage of GA fatalities. Night flying has about half again the fatality
rate of day flying, but less GA flying is done at night than during the day,
so the overall GA fatality rate (used for the above calculation) already
partly discounts the night-flying rate. So even if we were to ignore Jose's
reasonable caveat against excluding the types of accident we don't intend to
have, the odds of a fatality would not be lowered greatly.

Also, if you're going to fine-tune the figures, you have to consider that
personal flying has twice the fatality rate of GA overall. So that would
boost the odds to 8%, or perhaps 6 or 7% if we consider the mitigating
factors too.

On the other hand, that's only if you have 4000 flight hours *remaining*.
Your hours already flown do not count toward the risk (assuming you're still
alive when you read this).

--Gary