A Random Comment

[whiskeybravo]

When an airplane crashes, people avoid air travel because "better safe than sorry". Yet air travel is the safest form of travel (much safer than cars) and one plane crashing doesn't change that. However, people feel safer driving.

I always found this comparison funny, as if it has nothing to do with there being millions of cars/drivers and only thousands of airplanes/pilots. Of course the chances of being in a car accident are higher xD

[IndigoHawk]

I always found this comparison funny, as if it has nothing to do with there being millions of cars/drivers and only thousands of airplanes/pilots. Of course the chances of being in a car accident are higher xD

You find this funny because you don't understand that safety is determined by rate of death/injury and not by quantity.

There are more car trips than plane trips, so you are not surprised that more people die from cars than planes.
More trips is not what makes cars more dangerous. What makes cars more dangerous is the percentage of car trips that result in deaths, compared to the percentage of air travel that results in deaths.

The percentage of death in air travel is far lower than cars. So, if someone said, "A plane crashed yesterday. Is it safer to take a plane or a car?" ... the answer is ... the plane, because they still have a lower percentage of fatal trips.

Cars are more dangerous to you, both because you use them more frequently AND because they have a higher injury rate.

[TheRogueX]

I always found this comparison funny, as if it has nothing to do with there being millions of cars/drivers and only thousands of airplanes/pilots. Of course the chances of being in a car accident are higher xD

Not to mention the size ratio comparison of car:road and plane:sky. In traffic you may have 100x+ the amount of cars within 1 mile of you than a plane will *ever* have within even 10 miles of it.

[IndigoHawk]

Not to mention the size ratio comparison of car:road and plane:sky. In traffic you may have 100x+ the amount of cars within 1 mile of you than a plane will *ever* have within even 10 miles of it.

This is probably true ... but not relevant. You believe that if planes were as tightly packed as cars, then they would have more accidents. Therefore you feel that planes are more dangerous cars. You're probably right, but that doesn't matter, because that's not people use cars and planes.

In regular use (taking a plane trip from an airport or taking a trip to the grocery store in your car) a single plane trip is safer than a single car trip. This is based on the history of plane and car travel. (Of course, both are actually pretty safe, so there's no need to worry.) Safety statistics are based on how things are used, not how they were intended to be used or could be used.