[leoedin]

I really doubt if you dug into the flying statistics that all those miles are created equal. Apparently only 16% of air crashes happen during the cruise portion of a flight[1]. You probably need to consider the chance of crashing on a per-flight rather than per-mile basis (as 84% of accidents happen in the takeoff and landing phases, which are approximately the same length for all flights). A long haul flight (which 2600 miles would be) would therefore appear to be more dangerous than it actually is.

[1]: https://www.statisticbrain.com/airplane-crash-statistics/

The same page gives the odds of dying in a single airplane flight as 1 in 29.4 million. The odds of dying per mile driven are approximately 1 in 174 million. On that basis, your 10 mile journey has a risk of death of approximately 1 in 17.4 million - death is 1.7x more likely.

There's probably a bunch of other ways to interpret the statistics - car miles aren't created equally either, there's a difference between long haul and short haul flight fatality statistics, there's a big difference based on where the airline operates. It's (like all things in life) not very clear cut.

[jrkatz]

You bring some good information into this, which also gets more to the point I was trying to make, specific math aside - though I am comforted your math shows my flights are probably safer! Given that neither airplane journeys & miles nor automobile journeys & miles are created equally, per-mile statistics aren't particularly meaningful to an individual traveler.

[Retric]

First those 2600 miles are not absolutely safe, so it is a higher risk than an average trip.

And if you qualify the airline deaths based on journey type then you also need to qualify the car trip by journey type. As he is presumably sober, not tired, using a seat belt, not speeding 30+ MPH over speed limit etc his risks of dying over 10 miles is less than half that of the average 10 miles driven.

So, his risk of death per trip is actually higher when flying.