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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

> 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.

You can't influnce that when you fly.

> 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.

> Source?

Look at accident reasons in the statistics. Velocity is a big part.

Changing the variable doesn’t change the overall order of a magnitude but the personal one.

If you don’t DUI your risk of dying because of DUI is lower

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