You're comparing the mortality rate of automobile travel to that of aircraft travel. Would you also compare the rates at which the two forms of travel are subject to, say, bird collisions?
Comparing the two is drawing a false equivalence. Yes, flying and driving are both modes of transportation, but they're radically different in terms of methodology.
The objection is obvious and very easy to understand; it tries to compare apples with oranges, and here you are trying to argue that they are both fruit.
"Apples and oranges" is a metaphor for things that shouldn't be compared. But that's just asserting that you can't compare two things without giving a reason. And I'm asking why not?
There are lots of statistics comparing deaths from different causes. Why not use them to make informed choices about risk?
> "Apples and oranges" is a metaphor for things that shouldn't be compared.
No it's a reference to comparisons that don't make sense.
You can compare as many apples you'd like with oranges, just as you can compare air travel with roadway traffic, but you'd be making absurd and meaningless comparisons.
Respectfully, my objection is the implication that people should be okay with an "acceptable rate of mortality" for air travel because there's a relatively high rate of mortality for automobile travel (which is unrelated.)
There is an acceptable rate of mortality for everything. In some cases it's very low, but not zero. You can't leave the house without taking a risk, and there are risks at home, too.
Once again, my issue is that you appear to have falsely compared flight safety to car safety despite the fact that the two operate in very different ways.
I already understand that you think I'm wrong to make this comparison, but I still don't understand why. Why does it matter that airplanes and cars have many differences (of course they do)? If you die in a crash, you're just as dead.
The reason I'm talking about car safety is that driving or riding in a car is probably the most risky thing that most people do all the time. And yet, we accept the risk. So this seems like a good baseline for what should be considered an acceptable risk.
So I can understand not wanting to encourage airlines you don't like. I also understand wanting to encourage airlines to be safer, because improving safety is a good thing to do.
But that's different from not flying in a certain kind of airplane because you think you might die, while meanwhile taking other risks that are much worse. That's just inconsistent. We're all inconsistent sometimes, but it seems weird to object so strongly to someone pointing it out.
There are pieces beyond just equipment failure and operator error: things like infrastructure and process. Infrastructure has less of an impact in the sky, where the plane is pretty self-reliant, but process is huge, with maintenance schedules, co-pilots, ATC, etc all making the flying experience safer.
On the ground, it's the opposite. There's very little process around driving your car, but there's a lot of infrastructure. How roads and intersections are built, what signage is used and where, how and how much different modes are protected and isolated from each other, all have an enormous impact on road safety.
This is one of the key tenets of "Vision Zero", that blaming driver error is not an acceptable answer for why people die on the road. People make mistakes all the time, including while driving, and we have a moral responsibility to design systems and infrastructure that eliminate or minimize human death and suffering, even in the face of human error.
I understood it to be a rhetorical question, apologies if I misunderstood.
Driving encompasses both mechanical and human risks. Here we are talking about just the mechanical, so I don't think the comparison is particularly fair.
Comparing the two is drawing a false equivalence. Yes, flying and driving are both modes of transportation, but they're radically different in terms of methodology.