Sure, but relative risk still matters–lots of decisions in life are about relative risk in the context of other costs, not just simply “which one is absolutely safer”. I’m not afraid to fly, and I totally believe that it’s safer than flying. I just think that in terms of risk assessment, it’s an oversimplification to treat all drivers as equally at risk when there are a handful of factors we know make a huge difference and that are objective and under the driver’s control.
I know. But I bet someone can calculate some of those things–this is exactly the sort of thing actuaries are good at. Not on a motorcycle, not drunk, seatbelt on, safe car. Out of sheer curiosity, I’d really like to see that data.
By mile traveled, yes it is. It has nothing to do with how much control you have over the situation. You are much more likely to get killed walking, or biking, or driving across the US, for example, than taking a plane.
Even if we’re talking time, and not mileage, it’s still safest. Some years absolutely no commercial airliners crash. Can you say the same about cars?
No one is treating all drivers as equal, and I think we all agree that you are a safer driver and less likely to get into an accident than a drunk. Driving has gotten safer with better cars, but so has flying.
But there were zero deaths in commercial airplanes in 2017 (Cite) and I’m rather sure there were not zero deaths even for safe drivers, so your statement is factually incorrect.
There are some cases where the drunk driver is socially conscious enough to kill only him or her self, but there are plenty where he kills people driving safely.
Then there are medical emergencies. Bad enough if you are a passenger, worse if you are a driver. Weather problems. Bridges collapsing under you.
You may feel in control in a car, but you are not nearly as in control as you imagine. I’m sure we all have tons of anecdotes to illustrate this.
Southwest had another incident this week due to a loss of pressurization.
The flight crew is aware that something is going on, there are audible &/or visible warnings in the cockpit. They need to figure out what’s going on & why, pull out(up) & follow the appropriate check list, get the plane to a safe altitude (defined as one where people have enough O[sub]2[/sub] to breathe ‘natural’ air, typically in the 8-10,000’ elevation range because there is only a limited amount of O[sub]2[/sub] on board for passengers) - this is typically much steeper than a normal descent, & communicate with ATC of their sudden altitude change. Communicating anything to passengers might not even make page 3 of their single-spaced typed procedures because standard crisis management is deal with the issue & stabilize it before communicating non-essential status updates. They weren’t in any danger from a simple depressurization & if they knew the above, once they saw the O[sub]2[/sub] masks descend they should have expected a much steeper descent than normal.
Where is your phone when you drive? In your pocketbook/pocket, or are you ever looking at it? How often do you do long drives/drive late at night/drive tired? Distracted/drowsy driving is comparable to drunk driving in terms of additional risk. How aggressively do you drive/when do you apply your brakes? How often do you check your brakes? Every year or two at a state-mandated inspection, or more often? I’d expect to go thru a set of brakes or two in five years (based on miles & type of driving). A well rested driver in a beater with new brakes may not need to worry about the crumple zones because they’ll stop before impacting anything where the tired, texting, but sober driver won’t.
I never made the claim that being a “safe” driver could make driving safer than flying. All I said was that for an individual driver making a cost/risk/rewards analysis, they have a lot of information about their own driving that could make a substantial difference in the relative risk.
That’s all I ever said. Y’all were jumping on the OP for even considering whether any actions of the driver can make a difference, and while I agree that a nebulous hope that you have the reflexes of a cat is wrong-headed, it is a fact that there are things you can do that lower the risk of driving a great deal–wear a seat belt, drive a fairly new car, be sober.
This isn’t about me. Obviously, there are lots of risk factors beyond drunk/seat belt/modern safety features, but all those other risk factors are also built into the statistics as it is given. Some of the drunks are also on their cell phones and haven’t checked their brakes.
I’m not saying that I have no risk of a car accident. That’s a strawman. I’m saying that a person who wears a seatbelt, is sober, and has good air bags, crumple zones, etc. is meaningfully safer than a person that does not. Do you really disagree with that?
Maybe you had a typo in post 61
where “it” seemed to refer to your driving.
I don’t recall anyone making the claim that all drivers were equally at risk. Since we don’t know what kind of driver the OP is, using statistics for all seems to be safe to do.
So you agree that the OPs fears are not justified?
That was a typo. I meant I was not afraid to fly, and I totally agree it’s safer than driving.
I don’t think the OPs fears were justified. I never said they were. All I said was that it is disingenuous to suggest that that blanket stat should be applied by a person to their individual situation.
I mean, in all honesty, what the stats show is that overall, both cross country driving and flying are quite safe. But if I know I am a drunk and I never wear my seat belt on principle, **I shouldn’t apply those stats to myself. ** In the same way, I think it’s a fair point to say “I always avoid these very common risk factors that are widely understood to have a meaningful impact on driving safety, so I reckon my personal risk is much smaller than the stats suggest”.
Do you agree with that?
Wow, I can’t believe there are over 60 posts after being answered in #2.
Actually I ought to be used to it by now.
That’s because the question at face value was answered, but the OP was not really interested in the answer to the question at face value. The rest of the thread is the antidote to the OP poisoning the well.
Just as an aside, this reportshows that half of deaths in passenger vehicles were people who were unrestrained, but that seatbelt use went up to 88%. So the 12% of people who don’t wear seatbelts accounted for half the passenger vehicle fatalities. That’s pretty dramatic.
This reportshows that 20% of drivers in fatal crashes were drunk, and 80% of the time the fatality was themselves or their passenger. I imagine there is a fair bit of overlap with the no-seatbelt wearers, but it does make the point that there are things you can do to make driving dramatically safer.
I recently saw a stat that said that you’d have to take a commercial flight every day for over well 6000 years before you’d be involved in an incident in which someone (not necessarily you) died. Well, it didn’t say exactly that but you get the idea. That seems pretty safe.
Personal biases regularly lead people to the wrong conclusions.
I am a big proponent of seatbelt use and I believe they make you safer. But these figures alone show only correlation, not causation. For example, maybe people who wear seatbelts care more about safety to start with and so have better safety records.
Accident or fatality rates for driving, whether per mile- or time-based, are the average of the rates for the worst drivers, best drivers, and everyone in between. There are clearly things we can do to lower our chances of being in a fatal accident, like not driving drunk, wearing seatbelts, and having a well-tuned car. But these things are not secrets known only to an elite few. They are, on the whole, things that most drivers do or try to do already. If seat belt use is, say, 88%, and you are in that 88%, you are not doing anything to separate yourself from the majority of drivers as regards how safe a driver you are.
Let’s say that 10% of drivers are always drunk and speeding at night while sleep deprived in shitty cars in the rain, and they cause 70% of all accidents. The remaining 90% of drivers always wear seat belts and drive alertly during the day on dry pavement with awesome cars. So what must an individual do to make themselves a better driver than the average of the 90% of people who already do everything ‘right’? All of the 90% already believe that they are superior drivers because they do those correct things, and it is true that they are all better than the 10% of really bad drivers, but there must still be a range of behaviors among even good drivers, and people are terrible at judging their own competence. Even if you do the ‘right’ things, you might still be the worst good driver out there.
Never disagreed with it. After all, insurance companies offer different rates for different drivers for a reason. But even the safest driver is more at risk in a car than in a plane.
Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but it can certainly suggest it.
Maybe you can’t make yourself better than the other 90%. But if the bad 10% are causing 70% of the accidents, then a random individual in that 10% has a much higher chance of being involved in an accident than a random individual from the other 90%–even if every one of the accidents caused by the 10% involved one person from the 90%.
Meanwhile, it would only take a month to be dragged, kicking and screaming, off a United flight.
And this thought process is exactly why casinos stay in business: people routinely mis-assess the odds as being more in their favor than they really are. As others have pointed out, human beings are terrible at assessing long-term risk; they’re terrible at assessing their own skill levels.
It’s not disingenuous to say that a “blanket” statistic should be applied to an individual. That statistic, by definition, is likely to be predictive. That’s what probability is. The statistics, generally speaking should be applied: they’re more likely to predict the outcome than anything else.
The factors that play into an individual car or commercial aircraft crash are so variable that an individual risk assessment–for a particular flight to Dallas or a particular drive to the grocery store–would either be meaningless or indistinguishable from the “blanket” probability.
Manda JO, your posts seem thoughtful, and I’m not suggesting that your points are not thought through. But It’s fallacious (though tempting) for anyone to think that because of X, Y and Z factors, the statistics don’t apply to them. The statistics apply to most of the people most of the time, and sobriety, crush zones and prudence move the needle less than one might imagine.
There are behaviors that could increase or decrease the risk for an individual driving trip, sure. But commercial passenger flights are so much safer than driving in general that, as many here have already pointed out, no set of mitigating factors is going to make driving as safe or safer than flying–not for anyone.
Of course it’s tempting to think that I’m so skilled/safe/careful that the statistics don’t apply to me, or that they apply to me differently than they do to other people. But the odds are that I’m wrong.
Well, no. All it can suggest is that further study would be necessary to determine causation.