I once analyzed the numbers and flying isn't actually much safer than driving per trip. The numbers look insanely good because they quote them per mile. Google says 1 death in 6 million trips vs 1 in 8 million, if you ask it twice so it actually does the math correctly.
I too did that calculation once and came to the same conclusion as you did.
However, it's important to note that flying keeps getting safer, and has gotten safer over the last decades, so as far as I can tell, flying is now indeed much safer per trip than any other means of transportation
This Wikipedia page cites an IATA report from a few years back with a number of 1:18 million trips.
There's a table in that link that shows air at 117 deaths per billion trips and bus at 4.3, I didn't look into it further, but what numbers are you looking at?
That table shows UK data from the 90s, aviation has made a lot of progress since.
How exactly the risk of flying compares to other modes of transportation on a per-trip basis is a difficult question to answer really well, I couldn't find one place aggregating up-to-date statistics.
Unfortunately the 4e-8 number can't be compared directly to the fatalities per billion journeys numbers from the table you cite, since fatal accidents include accidents where at least one person died, including things such as accidents with personnel on the ground where all passengers were safe.
If we ignore this and assume a 100% death rate, that would put flying in the same ballpark as car-based transportation from the table you cite, but more dangerous than a bus by almost a factor of 10. This definitely overestimates the danger of flying, possibly by a lot, since there have not been any hull loss accidents with those aircraft models so far.
I think the general conclusion holds that flying has in the last few decades become comparatively safe even on a per-trip basis (at least on modern aircraft).
But I haven't found great data enabling a detailed comparison to other forms of transportation.
I'm not sure why looking at the incidents per trip would be preferable over looking at the incidents per mile. If I think about comparing two activities when it comes to safety, I feel like I'd want to look at the number of incidents per second of performing either activity.
EDIT: here's a thought experiment. You're taking a trip to the grocery store. You have two routes in mind, the direct one, which takes 5 minutes, and the detour via the North Pole, which will take weeks. One of these trips is safer than the other.
> I'm not sure why looking at the incidents per trip would be preferable over looking at the incidents per mile.
Personally when enter a vehicle and start a trip, I'm interested in arriving at the destination alive, regardless of distance. If something bad happens, whether I die 1km into it, or 10.000km into, is quite pointless. So incidents per trip probably conform better to how people evaluate travel risks.
Exactly, so when I get in that car, I want to know the probability of dying. How do you compute this? By taking the number of crashes per kilometer, and multiplying by the number of kilometers you'll drive for. A trip of 5000km is less safe than a 5km one. That's just common sense. Similarly, when comparing flying versus driving from Amsterdam to Paris, you are, as you say, interested in which method is most likely to get you to your destination alive. So you take the number of incidents per kilometer for planes and cars, and multiply them by the distance between Amsterdam and Paris. The interesting figure really is incidents / kilometer, that's just basic math.
> taking the number of crashes per kilometer, and multiplying by the number of kilometers you'll drive for. A trip of 5000km is less safe than a 5km one.
When comparing a difference of 1000x, sure its probably safer.
Your premise is wrong though, it isn't common sense to take a generalized statistic like deaths per km and extrapolate that to be the correct estimate for any particular trip.
The statistic loses all context of differences in vehicles, road conditions, time of day, specific roads, etc. The stat is a great example of how a statistic seems meaningful to get a big picture but is completely useless to us as we can't make any decisions based on a number that is so generalized as to lose all context and meaning.
Assuming that the survival rate is constant as a function of trip length, the empirical estimate of the risk is fully determined by the number of deaths per distance.
> Assuming that the survival rate is constant as a function of trip length
That's an assumption that doesn't hold up, at least that's the argument I was trying to make above.
Generalizing so much data down to a single statistic makes the number useless. Almost all context is lost, really the only context kept is mode of transportation and distance traveled. That isn't enough to help anyone make a decision for any particular trip.
However the risks aren't necessarily proportional to miles travelled.
So for example with flights - I'd imagine the most dangerous parts are the take-off and landing - which happen once per trip no matter how long you fly for inbetween.
So for flights incidents / kilometer are perhaps misleading.
The other key point when comparing car stats to flights is car stats include pedestrian/cyclist and motorcyclist deaths which make up perhaps around half of the deaths.
Yet I suspect the people in twin towers weren't included in airline death stats.
Sure there isn't a perfect single metric - just pointing out that the one the airlines prefer appears to be biased towards air-travel.
The other factor that is often ignored is the issue of control. As a passenger of an airline you have very little impact on the chance of an accident - you are just an accident statistic.
Whereas if you are driving, your own driving behaviour, choice of car, route etc puts you more in control of the chances ( though of course by no means completely ).
This has a big impact on the perception of risk ( as more than average think they are better than average :-) ).
A frequent flier is still more likely to die in a car accident than airplane crash. Hell, even airline pilots are more likely to die driving to work than in their planes. You have to get to risky GA practices before the risk of dying in the plane dominates the normalised terror that our roads are.
Unsafe air travel has been regulated out of existence in the best regions. Piloting a small airplane in a random country is still dangerous though. Unfortunately it is hard to avoid doing the equivalent in a car.
In theory it would be possible to create a safe driving car that would avoid unsafe roads, conditions, mental state, amount of driving, driving practices, speeds, distances etc. But a lot of the time it would just end up not being compatible with the road system and owning a car. And it still wouldn't totally prevent an accident, especially not caused by anyone else.
> Piloting a small airplane in a random country is still dangerous though. Unfortunately it is hard to avoid doing the equivalent in a car.
As someone who does both, the former is still controlled in a way we just don't do for cars.
Note that the moment we go to countries that are actually willing to take people's driver's licenses (and put them in jail when they drive without one, the way you'd expect to be treated flying a plane unlicensed), the safety statistics change. The only way we're getting that in America, however, is with self-driving cars.
> How often do you fly and how often do you drive by car
I think I fly on average a bit more than once every two weeks. I'm in a car about every day, mostly for short trips--in the last month I probably spent about as much time in a car as in a plane. Pilots probably fly more hours than they drive.
You really have to fuck with the statistics to get driving to come anywhere close to commercial aviation in terms of safety, they're so far apart.
> If you take the area where you drive into consideration the death numbers change, the same is valid for the drivers behaviour
Source?
> You can't influnce that when you fly
Whether you can influence a variable doesn't change its order of magnitude. Unless you're driving on a closed track at low enough speeds that if you pass out you'll be fine, you're safer flying than driving.
That might be true for most and is a reasonable way of looking at it.
But if someone is going on a 10,000km trip and trying to choose between modes of travel, the mode with the fewest incidents per mile will be the safest way.
Personally if I'm about to go on a 500 mile trip and choosing between modes of transport on safety grounds, I'd pick the one with the highest chance of surviving that trip, which ceteris paribus is the one with the fewest incidents per mile, and not make the error of assuming that the risk of a 500 mile car journey is equal to the risk of the average 10 mile car journey the per-trip stats are based on.
(Complications like takeoff and landing might actually make a 10 mile commercial flight riskier, but that isn't an actual option. The 500 mile flight is going to work out safer in almost all circumstances though)
Travel can be necessary or discretionary. The per-mile safety is the relevant number when the travel is necessary, but if it’s discretionary, then I might choose to just stay home if the numbers (price, time commitment, missed events back home, death risk…) don’t seem that great.
Sure, but if you're evaluating the risk of a discretionary trip the crude per mile safety of the transport mode (multiplied by the specific trip mileage and adjusted by any other risk factors you're aware of) is still the correct starting point for estimation and the crude per trip estimate across all journeys undertaken by that mode of transport raised upthread still unambiguously the wrong one (especially if there are vast differences in average trip lengths like between aeroplanes and cars)
In most instances, people tend to budget travel by time rather than distance.
All things equal, people tend to budget about (one-way) 10 minutes for shopping, 20 minutes for commuting, and about 3--12 hours for holiday travel.
By foot, that translates to about 1/2, 1, and 6--36 miles (at 3 mph).
By bike, about 2.5, 5, and 45--180 miles (at 15 mph).
By auto, about 5, 10, and 90--360 miles (at 30 mph, typical aggregate speed).
By high-speed rail, 25, 50, and 450--1,800 mi (averaging 150 mph).
By plane, the shorter trips don't make much sense, but 1 hour travel will get you 150 -- 500 miles, 6 about 3,600 mi (continental distance), and 12 hours > 7,000 mi (intercontinental).
Numbers are rough, but for ballpark comparisons should work.
People didn't begin travelling continental / transcontinental distances for holiday or business until air travel was widespread, cheap, and safe. Where exceptional travel was absolutely required it was undertaken, though until the age of steamships, very very few people undertook ocean voyages of more than a few days' duration. Crossing oceans took weeks, if not longer.
It’s more than a planning topic. A plane trip is atomic, you can’t cit it in pieces (it just becomes “more trips”). Once on a plane you are there till the end of the trip and flying 1mi or 10000mi is still one trip. The length of the trip has very little statistical impact on the outcome. Statistically most crashes are on takeoff or landing, length of flight doesn’t impact this.
The point is that whether you crash in the first mile or the last mile, you still crashed on a trip. Since you can’t count 9999mi safe, and 1mi deadly then you’re realistically doing statistics on trips, then multiplying by miles but this just inflates the numbers and muddies the waters.
The multiplication by miles isn’t obviously wrong but it’s definitely misleading. It’s the kind of thing that sounds relevant but isn’t really.
But people generally don't take airplanes for groceries or commuting.
If you are going on holiday, you have a time budget for reaching that particular destination. With a car you would maybe choose places within a drive of 3 to 11 hours (at highway speeds), whereas a plane would maybe be between 1 hour and 16 hours. But then a longer road trip might also be more dangerous.
There are people who commute by air, usually the very rich and for shorter distances by helicopter. Speeds are lower than fixed-wing aircraft, but landings can occur in more places. Trips start in the 10s of miles range, which at airspeed is on the order of the 5--10 minutes I'd put at my lower-range of time budgets.
Current commercial helicopter transfer service from Manhattan to JFK (about 15 miles) is scheduled for about 5 minutes:
In your second example, you're missing the point. People tend not to take longer road trips out of a safety budget but a time one. With a limited vacation time budget, time spent travelling (unless that's the point of the vacation) is lost. Auto-based vacations tend to be closer to home.
It's the direct issue in decision making. You ask "is this trip safe for me to take?", and have example of "it's the same risk as a single car trip to work"
It depends. Are you flying because you need to get to the destination? You will have to do the miles so use per mile. Are you flying for vacation? Is the alternative to just drive to a nearest lake/mountain and vacation there? Then use per trip
They both have their place when used in the appropriate context.
With aircraft, takeoff and landing are the riskiest activities, for example. So per trip reporting is relevant. The scope of what an incident is matters as well.
I'm fairly sure a car trip from NYC to LA has significantly more expected accidents than driving to the corner store. So averaging over all car trips might not make much sense?
All the short car trips 'dilute' the statistics.
In the end, it depends on what question you want to answer with your statistics.
Short trips are more dangerous per-mile, and per-minute, than long trips. A minute of driving to the corner store is vastly more prone to accident than a minute of driving a stretch of interstate. NYC to LA probably has a higher risk than driving to the corner store, but only because you stop by the corner store every so often on the trip. So it may not be the case that the short trips "dilute" the statistics, especially per-mile.
It puts the numbers in context. The risk to any given passenger of taking an average flight (however many miles that is, pretty far) is about the same as the risk of the same person taking an average car trip (a shorter number of miles but still people don't think twice about it).
Because your life is measured in hours, not miles.
Also for the most flights the alternative is not driving or riding a train, but not travelling at all over that distance.
Examples:
1) unnecessary business trips ("that meeting could've been an email");
2) long-range vacations ("let's travel somewhere local 1-2 hr by car instead of 3-6 hr by plane")
Deaths aren’t the only negative consequence of auto accidents, however. I imagine if we count serious injuries per mile driving vs flying, the difference would be more stark.
They’re really quite clearly incomparable things. For example, over a two hour drive yesterday, I saw three vehicles with blown out tires and two vehicles stopped on the shoulder and witnessed a nearly serious rear-end accident that was only barely evaded by swerving onto the shoulder, not even to mention the hazardous driving while swerving in and out of lanes, tailgating and close passing, etc.
The point is that it’s simply not comparable because the consequences of air travel are far more significant, not to mention that there are dozens of people doing constant QA and maintenance on regular schedules that do all they can to prevent those major risks from manifesting themselves.
For context; ~42,500 die in vehicle accidents every year in the US. ~380 die in all aviation accidents, which also is largely private planes, which basically combines the worst of both. Miles traveled are utterly irrelevant in this regard, when around almost 3 people die every single day in every CONUS state.
Why would you count trips and not distance? The output of "traveling" is distance, and air travel is by far the safest method of generating that distance.
Measures like accidents per hour or per trip skew the numbers, because air travel generates much more distance per hour and per trip than other forms of transportation.
Imagine when we get the first interstellar ships. Even if 90% of them blow up at launch, it'd still be, by far, the 'safest' method of transit in existence if we use the deaths/mile stat.
Even for planes the stat is deceptive. Most people, hearing about the safety of flight, would think that if they replaced their car with a plane then they'd be far less likely to die in a crash, but that would be untrue because the real risk in flight is take off and landing - the distance traveled is near irrelevant.
Even assuming the stats are measuring the actual miles traveled and not the planned miles (I'm not sure that's true), the difference would be vanishingly small given how rarely planes crash on takeoff. The overwhelming majority of flights complete safely, so the denominator is barely changed at all if we don't include flights that crashed on takeoff.
If I take a trip to a fixed destination, then per mile (by each mode of transport) makes sense as if gives me the least risky way to get there.
But if I don't care about the destination, and only the risk, then I may simply choose somewhere close enough that the (risk per km * distance) from the other mode(s) of transportation is less than the risk from a flight.
You don't take a plane for a 2 mile trip, when that's one of the most common uses of a car. How does comparing "per trip" make any sense when planes don't even get you to where you need?
For any scenario where planes are not an option, their safety (or lack of it) is fictitious anyway.
I was thinking more along the lines of: I'm in Berlin, and it's possible for me to visit friends family in the UK by train* or by plane. If I want to visit them, I pick one of those options (plus the option of ferry or train for the channel).
If I want to go to the shops, my options are bus or walk*.
If I want to just go somewhere on holiday and I don't care where exactly, I can take the bus, trains, planes, etc., and pick my destination to taste, and at that point it's min( P(death or injury ∣ x ∈ destinations, y ∈ modes of transport) )
* not by car, I would have had to transfer my license within 6 months of moving here and I didn't, so it's not valid any more
> I once analyzed the numbers and flying isn't actually much safer than driving per trip.
Especially if you compare to highway driving, which I take it is the most similar to flying (as in: people usually don't use a plane as a transportation method to go to the grocery store). When I go to my secondary home, it's 95% highway driving.
In the EU not even 1 in 12 road fatality happens on the highway. You remove all the "between 18 and 25 years old drunk without a seatbelt on a friday or saturday night" accidents on the highways and it's something like not even 1 in 25 fatality happening on highways.
FWIW I very rarely fly. Last time was 2019. I simply hate the whole experience (being packed like sardines inside a tin can ain't my thing but then being treated like cattle at airports is kinda unbearable to me).
If you drove the same distance, you’d have more crashes. So you get more safe miles of travel on an airplane. Trip count is irrelevant, it’s how far you go.
What exactly is a "trip" I think comparing per mile is much better than per trip. I take make two dozen airline trips a year but I can do that many car trips in a week. On the other hand most of my car trips are on the order of a mile or two as compared to several thousand in a plane.
Per trip is also a poor metric, since trips vary wildly in length. I think you want something like accidents per hours of travel, i.e. hours that the vehicle is in active operation.
