[OT]: Planes safer than cars?

[JoeHill]

Lennart Sorensen wrote: 

> 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.

You mean like the geniuses in BC who let an 82 year old man fly his private
plane? A year after he had already had an incident wherein he missed the runway
on a simple approach? That could skew the data just a bit ;)

-- 
JoeHill
++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. Zoidberg: "Talk to the claw."
Bender: "Bite my collosal metal ass."
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