[jacquesm]

You can't really compare 'car crashes' to 'plane crashes'.

You'd have to take into account that if a plane malfunctions in mid-air a crash is a likely outcome, whereas if a car malfunctions whilst on the road a crash is an unlikely outcome (the likely outcome is you get to call the AA or the local equivalent and you waste some time).

That's what he meant with 'flying is inherently dangerous'. As in: if something goes wrong you find yourself in a spot that is not a natural position for a human being, you're very far above the planet and your plane likely does not have standard equipment to deal with that situation (and neither do you). This as contrasted with a car which will simply coast to a halt by the roadside. That's still not a 100% safe situation but much more safe than being a mile up in a small airplane that decides to stop working for some reason. If it is 'just' an engine issue you'll be making a forced landing and if you're unlucky the terrain may be rough enough to flip the plane, if it is anything besides an engine problem it may simply be 'game over' for anybody on board of the plane.

[lmm]

Inherent or not, surely what matters is the actual, empirical level of danger? If a plane taxi is more dangerous in practice than a car taxi then I can see an argument for regulating them more stringently, but if the risk is similar then surely the regulations should be too.

[jacquesm]

General aviation is about as dangerous as driving a car, it is an order of magnitude or more less safe than commercial flights.

[Animats]

Actual stats:

    General aviation: 11.2 fatal accidents and 19.7 fatalities per million hours

    Commercial aviation: 0.2 fatal accidents and 6.5 fatalities per million hours 

    Driving: .528 fatal accidents and .588 fatalities per million hours [1]

That's per hour. Accident rates per mile look much better for aviation, because planes are faster. Commercial aviation has more fatalities per accident because the planes are bigger. Note the 50x difference between fatal incidents in GA and commercial aviation.

[1] http://www.meretrix.com/~harry/flying/notes/safetyvsdriving....

[jacquesm]

Good find. Also worth nothing this bit:

" GA flying covers small training aircraft capable of cruising at 100mph, and business jets capable of cruising at several hundred miles per hour, so choosing an average cruise speed is difficult, but for the sake of argument, we'll choose 150mph. This gives us a comparison of:

    GA: 7.46 fatal accidents and 13.1 fatalities per 100M miles
    driving: 1.32 fatal accidents and 1.47 fatalities per 100M miles 

So when compared on a mile to mile basis, flying has 5.6 times as many fatal accidents, and 8.9 times as many fatalities (these number would be even worse for flying if we took out motorcyle and pedestrian fatalities). "

Still quite a bit more dangerous per mile than for driving. (More than I would expect actually.)