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

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...

"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"

"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

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).

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?

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?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Hey. By using vehicle miles as the standardization factor for statistical
comparisons, the Space Shuttle should be by far the safest form of
transportation. Right Jim?

Skylune opined

Hey. By using vehicle miles as the standardization factor for statistical
comparisons, the Space Shuttle should be by far the safest form of
transportation. Right Jim?

When making comparisions, there are 3 metrics. Per hour, per mile, and per
trip. The shuttle is (I suspect) pretty good per mile, iffy per hour and
terrible per trip.

What metric you use depends on why you are using a particular vehicle.


-ash
Cthulhu in 2005!
Why wait for nature?

The shuttle is (I suspect) pretty good per mile

Oh, I don't know. The trips were only about three thousand miles apiece.

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

Jose opined

The shuttle is (I suspect) pretty good per mile

Oh, I don't know. The trips were only about three thousand miles apiece.

Many were were about 5 miles. I guess that makes the shuttle worse than
private GA.


-ash
Cthulhu in 2005!
Why wait for nature?

"Skylune" wrote:
Hey. By using vehicle miles as the standardization factor for
statistical comparisons, the Space Shuttle should be by far the safest
form of transportation. Right Jim?

Well, let's see, first we have to find the miles traveled. I found this
site with some totals:
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches..._sidebar2.html

They say:

"Fleet Total: 354,775,865 miles (567,641,384 kilometers)."

Space fatalities (and many other space stats) found he
http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/...pacestats.html

14 fatalities.

So the rate for the Space Shuttle fleet works out to:

~3.9 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles.

By comparison, according to http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/ the U.S. rate
for motor vehicle accidents is:

~1.7 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles.

CONCLUSION 1: On a per mile basis, auto travel is safer than space shuttle
travel. So it isn't the safest form of transportation even by that generous
measure.

CONCLUSION 2: You don't actually research anything yourself, thus getting
yourself into trouble by making assertions you haven't checked. You could
have found the space shuttle stats yourself with some trivially obvious
search keywords.

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