[OT]: Planes safer than cars?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 01:53:31PM -0400, Scott Elcomb wrote:
> Flying in the face of conventional wisdom - and partially relevant to
> the thread "Geek woman news story of possible interest..."[1] is this
> CNN article:
> 
> "NASA refuses to disclose air safety survey"
> http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/10/22/nasa.air.safety.ap/index.html
> 
> While this isn't related to terrorism, I still think it has some
> repercussions as regards to the general usage of aircraft for transit.
>  In particular, this quote scares the crap outta me[2]:
> 
> 'A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke,
> said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in
> airlines and affect airline profits. Luedtke acknowledged that the
> survey results "present a comprehensive picture of certain aspects of
> the U.S. commercial aviation industry."'
> 
> [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.linux.tolug/35517
> [2] I personally don't fly very often, but through various FOSS
> communities, clients, family, etc. I know many that do.

A big part of the problem is that they included general aviation (as in
private pilots) in the data.

What you really want to do is compare:
Commercial planes to other methods of commercial/public transit

Commercial planes against private people in their own cars

Commercial/public transit compared to people in their own cars

Private pilots compared to private cars

Many private pilots do stupid things, just like many drivers of cars do
stupid things (as anyone that has been on the road lately knows).
Unfortunately when you do something stupid in a small plane, it is
likely to go worse than doing something stupid in a car.

The people flying the commercial planes are much more trained, have
better equipment, and have more than one person to deal with the
situation.

So if you compare commercial flying to driving in your own car, I am
sure the commercial plane wins on safety record.  If you compare all
flying to all driving, then the flying probably looses quite badly.

I believe the results of the comparisons would show people that the safest
thing to do is to NOT leave their transportation in their own incapable
hands, but rather leave it to the profesionals. :)

--
Len Sorensen
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