# Is Flying REALLY The Safest Way To Travel? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 14, 2018, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172 "2018-05-14T23:15:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172/121 "2018-05-20T11:37:17Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > [What's the safest way to travel](http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/13/news/economy/train-plane-car-deaths/index.html) > > Airlines - .06 deaths per billion miles > Bus - .14 deaths per billion miles > Subway - .24 deaths per billion miles > Rail - .47 deaths per billion miles > Car - 5.75 deaths per billion miles > Motorcycle - 217 deaths per billion miles Would you happen to have the figures for helicopters, bicycles or walking? > [@tafinucane](#): > > The per-km figures are an incomplete measure. There are 117 deaths per billion passenger-journeys in air travel, and only 40 deaths per billion automibile passenger-journeys. > > To get the odds of “am I going to die walking onto this commercial flight” vs “pulling out of my driveway”, you would need to adjust the numbers down to account for the propensity of aviation deaths per sortie coming from hobbyists, and up to multiply the dozens of average passenger-journeys per flight. > > [http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/risks\_of\_travel.htm](http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/risks_of_travel.htm) You signed up in 2006, started posting in 2018 and this is your third post, one of which is a duplicate. Could you explain how that happened? ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172/122 "2018-05-20T11:37:37Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Is there evidence that seat belts would add significant safety to passengers on trains and buses? Would passengers wear them? Well, the _ding, ding, ding_ would quickly become annoying. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172/123 "2018-05-20T14:18:55Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > And I suspect that for even a very frequent flier, he or she makes hundreds or even thousands more passenger trips in a car as opposed to an airplane. Unless they are carless in a big city perhaps. That statement may be true but I don’t follow what your point is. What decision are you trying to make or question are you trying to answer with the available data? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172/124 "2018-05-20T21:27:07Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > That statement may be true but I don’t follow what your point is. > > What decision are you trying to make or question are you trying to answer with the available data? You can make a decision based on one trip - or you can make a decision based on the overall risk to you. On trip to the grocery might be as safe as a single plane trip, or almost in years when there are no fatalities. But if you consider the risk over a year’s time, say, you might make a dozen plane trips but thousands of car trips. As has been mentioned already, the reason the mile near your house is the most dangerous is that is where you do most of your driving. Same thing, really. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2018, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172/125 "2018-05-21T02:17:07Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > So all you have to do to reduce your risk by 1/3 is to keep your car parked a mile from your home. And don’t forget two bombs when you do fly. ([What is the logical/statistical switcheroo behind this joke? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=609647)) ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2018, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172/126 "2018-05-21T05:15:39Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Driving kills about 1.5x10[sup]-8[/sup] per passenger-mile. Flying is 2x10[sup]-11[/sup]. The Shuttle was about 5x10[sup]-9[/sup]. So, not as good as flying, but better than driving. Of course, most people don’t drive 3 million miles. > > The Shuttle+ISS combo gets within an order of magnitude of flying safety (2x10[sup]-10[/sup] deaths/passenger-mi) if you stay for 6 months. You caused me to crack a grin when I read this. But counting ‘miles traveled’ by orbital distance is hardly an accurate metric when during the orbiting phase the forces on the spacecraft are tiny. Though not zero, there are complex life support systems that have to continue to run, and there is other traffic (micrometeorites and orbital debris) you can collide with. Anyways, the traveling is during spacecraft launch and reentry, both extremely violent events that are very high risk. (yes, nobody has died in a Soyuz in decades, but in recent years the sister cargo version of the rocket has had nasty disasters that would have killed everyone onboard if it had been launching a Soyuz. And obviously we lost a space shuttle both on launch and on reentry) ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172/127 "2018-05-23T05:33:41Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Airplanes are much safer per passenger-_mile_, but the stats change if measured per passenger-_hour_ (though not nearly enough, I think, to make planes less safe). This does have a little relevance: Hours spent in travel is more relevant for certain purposes, both business and personal. > [@CookingWithGas](#): > > How can this be relevant? I want to know the relative risks of two options for covering the same _distance_. Nobody chooses between 4 hours in a car vs. 4 hours in a plane. Sure you do, if you are limited by time (i.e. I have 4 hours to get somewhere) and the destination is less important. Before I get to that, though, I agree that if the goal of travel is to get to a certain destination, then comparing per passenger-mile is the correct metric to use. However, if the goal of travel is to simply go _somewhere_ on vacation, then comparing per passenger-hour is more relevant. For example, suppose I want to go away for a long weekend. Living in New England, my options might include driving up to Maine, or flying to Houston. Both of these options are about 4 hours away for me. If I wanted to compare the relative danger of these two trips, I would want to use passenger-hours as my metric. It is not particularly relevant for me to compare flying to Houston vs. driving to Houston, as I would never make that drive, nor would it be feasible for a short vacation. Nor does it make sense for me to compare driving to Maine vs. flying to Maine, as Maine is too close to fly to be cost-effective and time-effective. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172/128 "2018-05-23T14:02:41Z")
> [@robby](#): > > Sure you do, if you are limited by time (i.e. I have 4 hours to get somewhere) and the destination is less important.[…]my options might include driving up to Maine, or flying to Houston.[…] I disagree that fatalities per hour of travel is the right comparison to make, but after mulling this over I believe using fatalities per passenger-mile to measure air travel safety is misleading. We really need to look at a more complex metric that takes into account distance _and_ the number of trips. Based on figures from 2004-2017, [58% of fatal commercial aviation accidents happen during descent and landing](https://www.theglobalist.com/when-do-planes-crash/). About 22% happened during takeoff and climb, about 10% happened during cruising, and 10% happened while taxiing. Cruising is the only rate that makes sense to tie to distance traveled. The others are all events that occur one time per flight. If you include a lot of long-haul flights in passenger-mile statistics, it skews the results–it makes flying look safer even though the long-haul flights have the same probability of an accident on takeoff and landing. I cannot find any such statistics that apply to passenger car travel, but it would be plausible that fatal events would not be tied to departure and arrival any more so than en route travel (this is also consistent with my personal experience in 45 years and half a million miles of driving). However, the type of road probably does play a role, in that crashes at 70 MPH on an interstate may cause more fatalities than 30 MPH crashes on local roads. I cannot find any statistics that break down fatalities per passenger-mile based on road type but that would be essential in determining the probability of a fatality on any specific trip. So to compare driving to Maine vs. flying to Houston, we would look at the the route to Maine and apply statistics for fatalities per passenger-mile for each major type of road (I would use speed limit as a surrogate for type of road) and apply it to the actual route. Then we would look at fatalities per flight for takeoff and landing, and add in fatalities per cruising passenger-mile for the distance to Houston. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172/129 "2018-05-23T23:59:51Z")
You should probably also just look at accident stats for American carriers only if you’re comparing a driving trip to a flying trip. That would improve the airline stats significantly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-flying-really-the-safest-way-to-travel/814172.md?page=6)