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Comment by jonny_eh | Hacker News Reader

How is driving safer than air travel?

Just a quick googling got me this: http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/13/news/economy/train-plane-car...

    Cars and trucks: 5.75 deaths per billion miles
    Commercial air travel: 0.06 deaths per billion miles

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I don't disagree with you but I don't think deaths per mile is a good way to compare modes of transportation. The car/truck numbers include intra-city miles driven for a start. If you can narrow it down to accidents on interstates I think it'd be better.

My guess is that it wouldn't matter much, since accidents at intra-city speeds are rarely fatal.

Accidents on country roads are often fatal though, so maybe that is where the difference would come from (and country driving is not an alternative to flying commercial).

>In 2014, the most recent year for which vehicle miles traveled data are available, the rate of crash deaths per 100 million miles traveled was 2.4 times higher in rural areas than in urban areas (1.81 in rural areas compared with 0.74 in urban areas).

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/roadway-and-environment/fa...

So you're right, country driving is more dangerous than urban driving, but both are far more dangerous than flying on a per-mile basis.

I would disagree, as I'm assuming those deaths include pedestrians, who are rarely present in inter-city travel.

I understand this statistic and get why it's often referenced, but how about this question instead? "Per accident, which has higher likelihood of death?"

I feel that's what worries people. Ya, per mile traveled its less likely, but per accident I imagine is a much different story.

"Probability of death conditional on an accident" sounds like a statistic designed to fool people who really just care about the probability of death, preying on a cognitive error.

But that statistic is pointless because you're so much more unlikely to get into an accident. It's irrelevant that you're more likely to die in a plane crash than a car crash. By that logic, you should never drive more than 5 miles an hour, because with each mile an hour you increase your speed, you're more likely to be in a fatal accident.

That makes it worse actually - not only are you more likely to die in a car per mile, but you are many more times likely than THAT higher number to get injured.

It may be what worries people, but that's only because people are irrational. That number is utterly meaningless. If you use that number to decide safety, then stubbing your toe before you go BASE jumping makes it safer!

you you're saying that people prefer to be maimed more and so would choose driving over flying because there's less chance of them being maimed when they fly?

honestly that makes no sense

But that's an inherently wrong way of looking at it. If you're traveling somewhere in a plane vs on the road, you're way more likely to die. Even if you factor own your own human error (but not others').

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