[sklargh]

Recent failures by Boeing aside, the amount of thought that goes into the holistic safety of commercial aircraft is astounding. It kind of blows my mind how hardened a typical passenger cabin is to fire, not to mention other hazards.

[ceejayoz]

Yup. The "fatalities per mile" chart is pretty astounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#/media/File:Fa...

[zipiridu]

IIRC takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts, so I'd be more interested fatalities per trip. An intercontinental plane ride would cover more miles than I drive in a year which makes the per mile stat meaningless to me. I think it would still be in the plane's favor but probably not as significantly. And in that case if you're a safe driver (healthy adult, doesn't drink or do drugs, doesn't speed, etc) it might skew in favor of driving since I'm sure some groups are much higher risk.

[mertd]

If you are a terrible driver, you can certainly make your individual odds of accident a lot worse than the average case, but I'm not sure being a good driver improves your odds by that much. A lot of the risks are totally out of the driver's control (e.g., other road users, equipment, weather etc..).

[throwaway0a5e]

Choice of weather conditions is within your control, just don't drive in terrible weather.

Being a good driver does a ton to insulate you from the shenanigans of

Equipment failure is basically a rounding errors but also within the driver's control since "flat tire at speed" is probably lion's share of crashes in that category.

[tialaramex]

Bad weather is certainly a factor in a lot of General Aviation accidents. VFR into IMC (Visual Flight Rules, ie you fly by looking where you're going; into Instrument Meteorological Conditions, ie you can't see very far due to low cloud or nightfall) kills a bunch of people every year. Some of those killed are IFR rated. In theory they know how to fly a plane when you can't see where you're going, but theory and practice are different.

One thing that's different between GA and driving is that you could stop driving. An hour from home, realising that the road really is too treacherous, you could pull over and walk. Up in the sky they don't have that option at a moment's notice. But one thing that's exactly the same is mission mindset - people fixate on what they intended to do until after it's far too late rather than have contingency plans.

[fragmede]

Eh? It's absolutely an option, from a technical weather forecasting perspective, to see that a storm exists, and to abort a particular plane flight before it takes off, or reroute to another airport. This happens all the time in extreme weather conditions (eg winter anywhere it snowstorms). That airlines choose not to more proactively cancel flights in moderately inclement weather is a business decision, not a shortcoming of our weather forecasting abilities. Flights often get delayed by weather at the other end - it's jarring to hear the pilot say the flight you're on is delayed due to heavy rain at your destination, when it's a gorgeous sunny day in your current location, but it happens quite frequently!

[sklargh]

This is a nice summary. VFR into IMC and pilot task saturation/distraction are such killers in the broad GA space. Literally forgetting the fly/operate the plane.

[borski]

Not always within your control (pandemic notwithstanding). Sometimes you have to catch a train, commute into work, etc., and "the weather is bad" is not always a valid excuse.

[nradov]

In many years the US commercial airlines have literally zero fatalities. You're more likely to die by falling in the shower.

https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca...

[pfranz]

I remember hearing with the rise of regional airlines starting in the 90s the number of flight cycles (takeoffs/landings) went way up for some types of planes...and I assume for the "average flight." An increase in the number of short trips would make lowing the per-mile rating more impressive.

[throwaway0a5e]

The stat is doubly misleading because it is skewed by the proliferation of long direct flights as turbofan widebody jets proliferated and air travel became more affordable which both happened in the same time period as that chart.

I don't think flying is particularly dangerous but the person you're replying to is being highly naive or misleading by taking that chart at face value.

[ceejayoz]

I’m neither naive nor misleading. By any measure, airline travel - particularly in the US - is remarkably safe.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/colgan-air-crash-10-years-ag...

[mpalczewski]

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.

[worker767424]

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

[hansthehorse]

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

[bittercynic]

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

[JCharante]

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

[bmitc]

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.

[ceejayoz]

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.

[bmitc]

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.

[naniwaduni]

Considering that ~half of collisions involve multiple vehicles, I suspect your feeling of being in control is a bit of an illusion.

[evgen]

When you are in a plane there is a 100% probability that the driver will be a trained professional, while according to your stats there is less than a 2% chance that your driver will be a trained professional when you are in a car.

While I have no hard stats I would also assume that a plane is much safer when something goes wrong. Why?

1) Professional 'driver' who has trained for years to handle risks and failure scenarios and practices these on a regular basis.

2) Redundancy and graceful failure is designed into many of the components and systems on a plane, while cars tend towards the cheapest component or system possible unless mandated by law.

3) Space (both altitude and the fact that the sky is basically empty) provides time to solve some problems before they become catastrophic failures and makes other classes of problems very unlikely.

If you blow a tire, run into a deer, or have a transmission failure while you are cruising down the highway at 80mph you have seconds (at most) to react and respond. If a plane hits birds, has an engine fail, or loses some other system they usually have minutes to troubleshoot the problem and redundant systems that prevent the plane from just falling out of the sky.

[nemo44x]

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.

[bmitc]

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.

[ceejayoz]

> I don't think engine failure on an airplane is such an anti-climatic event, on average.

It often is, actually. They have more than one engine precisely for that scenario, and can fly quite well with one down. Flights over water are also carefully planned based on distance to the nearest airport with an engine out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS

Even if you lose all four on a 747, there’s surprisingly large amounts of time to troubleshoot if you’re at cruise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

[t0mas88]

Engine failure on a modern airplane is quite anti-climatic. We train for it regularly, and there are standard procedures to follow after the failure. Basically secure the failed engine, if it's just after takeoff climb to a safe altitude (sometimes following a predetermined route) using the other engine, then select a runway for landing and land almost normally.

[sklargh]

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

[ceejayoz]

Those seem like odd metrics to go by.

[ghaff]

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.

[namdnay]

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?

[ceejayoz]

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.

[slownews45]

And despite the complaints, US pax travel (scheduled) is INSANELY safe relative to most other forms of transport.

They fly us around in tin cans at 30,000 feet without killing that many folks per year. I'd love to get status of fatalities per motorcycle mile vs airline mile. Got to be remarkably different.

[runako]

Data for transport modes excluding motorcycles: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

(airplanes are zero most years)

Data for motorcycles:

https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-motorcyc...

Eyeballing, it looks like motorcycles have roughly ~50x as many fatalities per mile as passenger autos.

[trangus_1985]

I've been riding for a long time. I definitely spent effort understanding risks and safety.

Motorcycle fatalities are mostly similar to factors that cause car fatalities, but extremely exacerbated.

For example, about 40% of motorcycle fatalities involve alcohol. One drink before riding a motorcycle is about equivalent to 4 before you drive.

Riding at night accounts for a significant amount of fatalities, as does unprotected left turns. Oversteering is another major factor, usually because you went too fast through a turn.

Also, motorcycle fatalities are currently rising. This is largely due to older people who have wanted to ride but couldn't or were afraid to. A 65 year old man on a 800lb 1.5L engine bike who's a new rider is going to take a bad situation a lot harder than a younger person on a smaller bike.

Motorcycles are more dangerous than cars, but if you understand the risks and employ constant self-improvement in your skills, you really begin to reduce your exposure to risk. Unfortunately, it does somewhat select for a group that likes to take risks.

[opwieurposiu]

Commercial aircraft are very safe, GA aircraft (your uncle with a cessna), are about as safe as motorcycles.

https://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/

[dmurray]

I don't know why this was downvoted. It's true, and an important correction to the GP's NSC link and the claim that "airplanes are zero most years". Notice that that page compares "scheduled airlines" to "passenger vehicles" (I think they mean cars? Since airplanes, trains and buses are also passenger vehicles...) but importantly does not include GA.

[Spooky23]

It makes sense. Motorcycles are unforgiving in terms of safety features and attract disorganized and reckless people like flies to light.

Successful pilots are the opposite personality. They tend to be adventurous in terms of seeking experiences but are able to embrace following strict rules.

[barrkel]

Per unscientific survey cited in https://www.rideapart.com/news/254972/why-your-next-motorcyc... 85% of pilots have motorcycle licenses.

There are many breeds of motorcycle rider, as I'm sure there are different breeds of pilot. The pipe and slippers brigade very much embrace following strict rules. In the UK, you'll frequently find them in RoSPA, where they follow the System of Motorcycle Control.

I don't know how true to life the Top Gun cliche of fighter pilot / sportsbike rider is, but anecdotally riding a sportsbike is the closest experience a civilian can get to a fighter plane on the ground.

Motorcycle racers are usually pretty exacting about the mechanical state and safety of their bike, and many top ranked competitive riders never ride on the road, only on track. The hazards on track vs on road are almost completely different.

Amateur stunters, weekend warriors and young squids are more likely matches to the cliche I think you have in mind: thrill-seekers who dabble but not particularly serious about it.

[Spooky23]

Exactly, better said! I didn’t mean to imply that riders are reckless, just that the reckless are attracted to bikes.

[slownews45]

I'm actually a rider (or was).

They don't attract reckless people. But what happens, you get used to the speed, the risk, the cornering - and so yes, you start going faster and faster. Problem is - hitting something at 100 on a bike, even just a little something on road - can be seriously game over. I stopped riding (kid / wife etc).

[walrus01]

If you look at the gory history of all the jet aviation disasters of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and read the wikipedia pages for the major events, all of those have contributed to the design decisions that resulted in a modern airliner like a 787 or A350.

The DC-10 for instance...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Accide...