# Are airplanes really safer than cars? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 22, 2006, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456 "2006-10-22T17:10:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/21 "2006-10-23T01:52:42Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Slant] Well, we now know that slithering on the hull can cause plane crashes. Have to tell the FAA… [/QUOTE] I shouldn’t have eaten _all_ the neutronium… ---
**Author:** ![JustAnotherGeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/58f4c7/32.png) [@JustAnotherGeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustAnotherGeek)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/22 "2006-10-23T02:39:11Z")
from [http://hazmat.dot.gov/riskmgmt/riskcompare.htm](http://hazmat.dot.gov/riskmgmt/riskcompare.htm) Motor Vehicle: 1.3 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles. Railroad: 1.3 deaths per million vehicle miles. Motorcycle: 31.3 deaths per 100 million miles. Aircrafts: 1.9 deaths per 100 million aircraft miles. Assuming there are no typos in the original source… I have to wonder about railroad and aircraft. Are we to assume that there are ~100 passengers per vehicle mile? If so, railroad is as safe as motor vehicle, and air travel is ~ 68x safer. And motorcycles? Damn. Just damn, that’s a startling number. ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/23 "2006-10-23T06:39:26Z")
Thankfully they will probably not stop making airplanes and motorcycles just because of the fears of a few timid souls. Just think of how safe driving would be if they trained and tested as strictly as they do for a pilots license. And forced the maintenance to be on par also. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/24 "2006-10-23T07:47:05Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] Aviation enthusiast and perpetual flight student here: You can’t talk about aviation as a whole with this topic. The accident and death risk is very different for different types of aviation. Commercial jets are incredibly safe. The last large jet airliner crash in the U.S. was just after 9/11 and happened on a New York - Santo Domingo flight with structural failure brought on by extreme turbulence right after takeoff. A few months ago, a regional jet took off on the wrong runway in Kentucky and killed 49 people. There are several million flights a year in the U.S. alone so these numbers are small. It would be interesting to see how many people would have been killed otherwise if they weren’t sitting aboard commercial flights for all that time. It is likely that commercial air travel causes an overall net savings of life overall. [/QUOTE] I don’t have a cite for it other than the “Gee Whiz!” info box in my psychology 101 textbook, but according to that, after 9/11 lots of folks stopped flying on airplanes and took road trips instead. In the 3 months after 9/11, there was something like 350 additional deaths in car accidents then there had been in the same 3 month period in previous years. The end result was that apparently more people died in car accidents while avoiding flying on planes than had actually died in the series of plane crashes that lead to them avoiding flying in the first place. To fly an airliner, a pilot has to have hundreds of flying hours, all sorts of training certifications, and oftentimes is coming out of the military aviation community, and has all the (very strict and in-depth) aviation training that military pilots get. In order to be allowed to drive a car (with passengers, even!), I took driving lessons for 3 months from a legally blind driver’s ed instructor that involved about 20 minutes of driving a week, and then took a 10-question multiple choice test. Now, do you REALLY feel safer on the road with me than you do in the air with one of them professional pilots? 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/25 "2006-10-23T08:36:30Z")
JustAnotherGeek writes (quoting from a webpage): \> Aircrafts: 1.9 deaths per 100 million aircraft miles. Note that on that webpage it says this is is the average for the five years 1999 to 2003. The webpage says that there has been an average of 138 aircraft deaths per year, so apparently this means that there was a total of 690 (plus or minus 2) deaths over those five years. It says in the notes to the table that this includes the 265 people on September 11th who were on one of the four planes. So if we didn’t include them, there would only be 425 people killed in aircraft accidents over those five years, for a yearly average of 85 aircraft deaths. This would make it 1.1 deaths per 100 million aircraft miles. Suppose we slid the five-year window forward to start just after the accident in October 2001 on the New York/Santo Domingo flight and to end five years later. There was only one scheduled aircraft crash with any deaths during those five years. I don’t know about general aviation. I suspect that the total would make the average noticeably less and hence make the deaths per miles even less than the 1.1 deaths per 100 million aircraft miles for 1999 to 2003 (not including September 11th). There are so few aircraft deaths that even a five-year average will be variable because most of the deaths will be in a few big accidents. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/26 "2006-10-23T09:56:19Z")
[QUOTE=Raguleader] To fly an airliner, a pilot has to have hundreds of flying hours, all sorts of training certifications, and oftentimes is coming out of the military aviation community, and has all the (very strict and in-depth) aviation training that military pilots get. [/QUOTE] [nitpick] Actually, a professional pilot needs _thousands_ of hours of experience to get an airline job. And nowadays, most professional pilots do not have military service in their background - the military isn’t training the numbers of people required so most new airline pilots come up through the civilian ranks. [/nitpick] ---
**Author:** ![oldmanwinter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b38774/32.png) [@oldmanwinter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oldmanwinter)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/27 "2006-10-23T13:14:03Z")
Just as not all air travel is equally safe, not all car travel is equally safe. Obviously if your car is well maintained; if you drive awake and sober; if you don’t run red lights; if you don’t drive as if you are in a race; if you swallow your pride and drive defensively; if you wear your seatbelt; etc. your odds of dying in a crash are lot lower than otherwise. How much lower is hard to say but it wouldn’t shock me if the odds were comparable to those of commercial plane travel. ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/28 "2006-10-23T15:03:09Z")
To find out how safe it is for **you** , you need to figure out what class you are in. For example, airline travel might be safer for a 19 year old male, but it might be more dangerous to fly versus driving if you are a 38 year old woman with 20+ years of driving experience. It reminds me of comparisons to getting hit by lightning. Well, the odds might be ten skazillion to one of getting hit by lightning, but if you are in a lightning storm with a 3 iron on a par 5, the odds have changed greatly! So, if you are 18 years old and driving around at 11pm on a Saturdahy night, you’d be safer on a flight from Pittsburgh to Dallas. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/29 "2006-10-23T15:37:14Z")
These comparison figures throw me for a loop. Should the comparisons be made basd on hours-driving vs hours-flying, and not mileage based? ---
**Author:** ![Wee\_Bairn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90db22/32.png) [@Wee\_Bairn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wee_Bairn)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/30 "2006-10-23T15:42:03Z")
As others have noted, almost all of the musicians who have died in plane crashes were on small crafts, piloted sometimes by inexperinced pilots (in John Denver’s case, himself), and often times in bad weather. I can’t recall any, with the exception of Kyu Sakamoto, who have died in commercial airline accidents. Obviously, your chances of dying when being piloted by an inexpereinced pilot do go up, same as by driving with an inexperienced driver. ---
**Author:** ![oldmanwinter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b38774/32.png) [@oldmanwinter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oldmanwinter)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/31 "2006-10-23T16:12:33Z")
[QUOTE=Philster] To find out how safe it is for **you** , you need to figure out what class you are in. For example, airline travel might be safer for a 19 year old male, but it might be more dangerous to fly versus driving if you are a 38 year old woman with 20+ years of driving experience. It reminds me of comparisons to getting hit by lightning. Well, the odds might be ten skazillion to one of getting hit by lightning, but if you are in a lightning storm with a 3 iron on a par 5, the odds have changed greatly! So, if you are 18 years old and driving around at 11pm on a Saturdahy night, you’d be safer on a flight from Pittsburgh to Dallas. [/QUOTE] True, but of course not all 18 year old men are the same. Many are excellent drivers. The bottom line is that the risk from driving is highly individualized. ---
**Author:** ![Mbossa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@Mbossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mbossa)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/32 "2006-10-23T23:05:11Z")
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan] It is _much_ safer to fly in a plane than it is to fly in a car. [/QUOTE] Agreed. However, it is much safer to drive a car down a busy highway than it is to drive a plane down a busy highway. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2006, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/33 "2006-10-23T23:36:16Z")
[QUOTE=Mbossa] Agreed. However, it is much safer to drive a car down a busy highway than it is to drive a plane down a busy highway. [/QUOTE] Nonsense. I bet if I started trundling down I-35 in a 767, people would yield to my right of way pretty damn fast. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/34 "2006-10-24T00:51:27Z")
[QUOTE=Wee Bairn] As others have noted, almost all of the musicians who have died in plane crashes were on small crafts, piloted sometimes by inexperinced pilots (in John Denver’s case, himself) [/QUOTE] Another nitpick - although the airplane was new to John Denver he was by no means an “inexperienced” pilot. He’d been license to fly since his teens and has owned and flown airplanes for many years before his fatal accident. He _was_ inexperienced in that particular _type_ of aircraft, which was a definite contributor to the accident, but the fact is that he has the experience and skills to have been a commercial/professional pilot, had he chosen that route instead of being an entertainer. [/nitpick] ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/35 "2006-10-24T06:00:52Z")
[QUOTE=Broomstick] Another nitpick - although the airplane was new to John Denver he was by no means an “inexperienced” pilot. He’d been license to fly since his teens and has owned and flown airplanes for many years before his fatal accident. He _was_ inexperienced in that particular _type_ of aircraft, which was a definite contributor to the accident, but the fact is that he has the experience and skills to have been a commercial/professional pilot, had he chosen that route instead of being an entertainer. [/nitpick] [/QUOTE] **Broom** John Denver proved the old pilots saying “The only time you have too much fuel is when you are on fire” IIRC he had problems trying to change fuel tanks due to the strange placement of the valve. [Gratuitous bad JD joke] Q. What was John Denver’s last hit? A. The Pacfic Ocean [/GBJDJ] ---
**Author:** ![Architeuthis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Architeuthis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Architeuthis)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/36 "2006-10-24T09:13:22Z")
I wouldn’t know. I always jumped out of the darn things before they landed! 82nd ABN DIV ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/37 "2006-10-24T10:09:16Z")
[QUOTE=Rick] **Broom** IIRC he had problems trying to change fuel tanks due to the strange placement of the valve. [/QUOTE] True. And experimental homebuilts are infamous for “strange placement” of various knobs and levers. Not to mention that airplanes in that weight range are also sensitive to the shifting weight of the occupants. Someone with more experience in them would be much more likely to either work out the switching thoroughly on the ground before attempting it in the air, try it for the first time at a greater altitude, and/or be much more cautious how they moved in the cockpit. Or, after the first step, decide to move the switch back to where the designer originally intended it to be. It may be that his experience with more conventional airplanes reduced the caution with which he approached the machine - I’ve seen that before with high-time pilots with extensive ratings “stepping-down” to lightplanes and ultralights. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456/38 "2006-10-25T16:19:43Z")
Are airplanes safer than cars? Well, that’s what Superman told me. And he’s never lied to me before. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-airplanes-really-safer-than-cars/377456.md?page=1)