[p1necone]

Eh, not really. Distance travelled !== quality of destination.

I can travel X minutes on a plane for Y cost to one set of destinations, or I can travel A minutes in a car for B cost to a different set of destinations. The actual distance between my current location and my destination means nothing to me, although the potential destinations do, which certainly are more varied with plane travel.

But I live in a pretty nice place, so travelling locally is pretty good too.

[cmeacham98]

We're comparing safety, not "quality of destination".

If you were to travel from point A to point B, and wanted to know whether driving or flying was safer, then the correct metric to look at is the "per distance" one.

[p1necone]

Yeah but most travel isn't to a fixed, "necessary" destination. About the only place like that for me is work, and I certainly can't fly there.

Or to put it another way - comparing two different modes of travel to one specific destination doesn't make much sense when the destination is partially fungible. I want to know what the safest way to get to (any sufficiently nice place) is, not to (one specific nice place).