Apparently, CEOs, doctors and the like assume that competence in one area of life implies that they're competent to do anything, like flying a plane.
My thought is, if I die or become horribly brain-damaged, I won't really care, because the capacity to care is gone. Existence only goes as far as you can interpret it.
Race you across the interstate! Go!
> If the average speed of car travel is 50 miles per hour, those 1.7 deaths occur in 2 million hours of driving. This makes general aviation, with 16 deaths per 1 million hours, roughly 20 times as dangerous per hour than driving.
http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety
If you look at "danger per mile", GA is only ~10x as dangerous as driving. I prefer the "per hour" statistic, though, but not for any good reason.
Of note: every insurance company I've ever dealt with for life and property insurance has asked if I'm a private pilot. My last renter's insurance policy had a rider exempting me from coverage when flying. Insurance companies are historically pretty good at assessing risk. Profitable ones, anyway.