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0 pointsmpalczewski4y ago0 comments

Hmm, after looking at that, and always being told that airlines are the safest. I was surprised they are only safest by that one metric (fatalities / distance) and not fatalities per trip or fatalities per hour.

0 comments

worker7674244y ago

Remember that takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous part of the trip.

hansthehorse4y ago

I usually hear it stated that it's the first two and last 8 minutes of any flight.

bittercynic4y ago

Surely the danger is almost always right after the flight ends :-)

JCharante4y ago

Well what counts as a trip? Surely a trip down the street to a Bodega would be safer than flying across an ocean.

bmitc4y ago

I have personally never liked being blankly told that flying is safer than driving, because I’d like to understand how safe flying is versus driving when something goes wrong.

ceejayoz4y ago

Two seconds of inattention in a car is a lot more likely to kill you than it is in a plane. It’s fairly constant risk - going off the shoulder is just a few dozen feet at most.

They also tend to be less well maintained, and the other participants less trained.

bmitc4y ago

That makes sense at first glance, but it's something I'm in control of. I was even thinking of this before, because the comparison is a little mismatched. I'm 100% likely to be a passenger when I'm in any plane, whereas I'm probably >98% likely to be a driver when I'm in a car.

I'm not sure why I was downvoted, because I'm just stating I'd like to understand (data/studies) instead of people's anecdotes and opinions, including my own.

My intuition is that car travel has a constant level of risk, whereas plane travel has a level of risk much below that when everything is good but (I'm guessing here) that risk goes much higher than the constant risk of car travel when something goes wrong (failure, human mistake, crash, birds, weather, etc.). I've searched for it before and didn't find anything, but it'd be nice to see any studies that confirm or deny this.

2 more replies

nemo44x4y ago

Things “go wrong” fairly “frequently” on airplanes but they are hardened for this with redundant systems and manual (as well as computer) overrides. You don’t hear about most of them but they are all logged and used for improvements.

The main difference is when a car has a catastrophic failure there’s a good chance the people involved survive.

bmitc4y ago

I suppose by wrong I mean something more than the redundant, robust, and various protection systems can handle. For example, on a car, I wouldn't consider the anti-lock brake system kicking in as something going wrong.

I've had an engine failure in my car while driving it. I simply was able to slow to a crawl until I got home. I don't think engine failure on an airplane is such an anti-climatic event, on average.

2 more replies

sklargh4y ago

Sort of interesting how the edge of catastrophic failure has moved out in both cars and commercial aircraft.

ceejayoz4y ago

Those seem like odd metrics to go by.

ghaff4y ago

What you probably really want to compare flying and driving is fatalities per trip--for the same trip. As others have noted, a longer trip in a plane is almost certainly safer per mile than a shorter trip given where accidents happen. (And the effect may or may not be further magnified by the fact that I assume the accident rate is higher on small regional jets. Though, on the other hand, they carry fewer people.) On the other hand, driving is probably much more proportional to distance.

namdnay4y ago

Fatalities per hour seems like a reasonable statistic if you want to talk about fear - how likely am I to die in the next 5mn?

ceejayoz4y ago

If my goal is "I wish to spend X hours in a form of transit", sure. If I need to get from LA to NYC, though... there's a lot more of those 5 minute periods if I'm driving.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

worker7674244y ago

Remember that takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous part of the trip.

hansthehorse4y ago

I usually hear it stated that it's the first two and last 8 minutes of any flight.

bittercynic4y ago

Surely the danger is almost always right after the flight ends :-)

JCharante4y ago

Well what counts as a trip? Surely a trip down the street to a Bodega would be safer than flying across an ocean.

bmitc4y ago

I have personally never liked being blankly told that flying is safer than driving, because I’d like to understand how safe flying is versus driving when something goes wrong.

ceejayoz4y ago

Two seconds of inattention in a car is a lot more likely to kill you than it is in a plane. It’s fairly constant risk - going off the shoulder is just a few dozen feet at most.

They also tend to be less well maintained, and the other participants less trained.

bmitc4y ago

I'm not sure why I was downvoted, because I'm just stating I'd like to understand (data/studies) instead of people's anecdotes and opinions, including my own.

2 more replies

nemo44x4y ago

The main difference is when a car has a catastrophic failure there’s a good chance the people involved survive.

bmitc4y ago

I've had an engine failure in my car while driving it. I simply was able to slow to a crawl until I got home. I don't think engine failure on an airplane is such an anti-climatic event, on average.

2 more replies

sklargh4y ago

Sort of interesting how the edge of catastrophic failure has moved out in both cars and commercial aircraft.

ceejayoz4y ago

Those seem like odd metrics to go by.

ghaff4y ago

namdnay4y ago

Fatalities per hour seems like a reasonable statistic if you want to talk about fear - how likely am I to die in the next 5mn?

ceejayoz4y ago

If my goal is "I wish to spend X hours in a form of transit", sure. If I need to get from LA to NYC, though... there's a lot more of those 5 minute periods if I'm driving.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse