I feel it's important to provide complete information. Flying is safer per mile traveled than driving. Driving is safer on a per-trip basis.
So if you compare your trip to the grocery store to your flight to visit extended family, the trip to your grocery store is safer. But if you compare 10,000 miles of driving back and forth to the grocery store over many trips vs a single 10,000 mile flight, the flight is safer.
You can’t make this blanket statement and I would bet on average it’s the opposite still.
- Flying in the US is on average ~750x safer per mile than driving according to 2000-2010 data (it’s likely even larger a difference in the modern era).
- I would venture to guess that most US flights are in the 1000-2000 mile range and most US car trips are easily more than the equivalent 2-3 miles.
- Most fatalities from flying occur during takeoff and landing, so longer flights are actually safer per mile. Relating this back to the thread, the risk of catastrophic failure from your choice (or non-choice) of airframe only really affects the off-ground danger and not the higher danger you face on a taxiway/runway.
- All of these numbers are based purely on fatalities but I’m guessing your definition of “safety” includes being maimed or otherwise seriously injured. You have several orders of magnitude higher chance of being seriously injured in a car crash compared to flying since accidents in aviation are much more likely to end in death.
If you slice it up per mile traveled, airplanes win.
If you slice it up per trip taken, driving wins.
If you slice it up per hour spent traveling, driving and flying are about the same. (according to the book Freakonomics)
Flying is very safe. The statement "flying is safer than driving" is industry propaganda to help appease fears of flying. They cherry-picked the statistic that made them look best and flooded the whole world with it.
If you had a magic genie and you made your one wish to replace all passenger vehicle trips with commercial airline flights, including quick trips to the grocery store, you would kill a lot of extra people.