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Comment by shepherdjerred | Hacker News Reader

Is flying getting less safe, or are incidents just getting more attention?

Flying commercially has been getting dramatically safer over time:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-m...

The numbers aren't in for the current year yet, but they will likely be just a little bit worse than 2019, placing this year in the top 5 on record for safety (all of which have been in the past decade).

I know it's technically safer to be in an airplane than a car, but for some reason the helplessness of being inside a plane always gets to me.

This idea of being in a metal barrel thrown at 900kmh relying on a hundred years of fuck-around-&-find-out at the mercy of a pilot who I do not know "but trust me". Yeesh.

Still, statistically, undeniably, the safest way to move people.

So safe that it’s getting hard to quantify in places. The last airline passenger fatality in the US was almost seven years ago. Compare with an average of well over 100 per day on the roads. There’s a lot more driving, but only by a factor of ~10.

> at the mercy of a pilot who I do not know "but trust me"

Well, I trust a professionally trained commercial airline pilot more than a random Uber driver any day. Literally been on cars where driver is watching TikTok while driving, among other dangerous behavior.

> technically safer to be in an airplane than a car

Safer per mile. I doubt it’s safer per hour.

No definitely safer per hour. "In 2022, the fatality rate for people traveling by air was . 003 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. The death rate people in passenger cars and trucks on US highways was 0.57 per 100 million miles." [1] Adjusting for a speed difference of 10x it's 0.03 for planes and 0.57 for cars. Which makes sense - it's pretty easy to crash a car, and much harder to crash a plane (there's not much to crash into in the air).

1. https://usafacts.org/articles/is-flying-safer-than-driving/

Huh, interesting.

I don’t think so, but if they broadcast all horrific car crashes daily, people may really get spooked

...makes me wonder if we should do that. would it lead to safer driving?

Aviation is safe largely because of training and adherence to procedure. I'm not sure about elsewhere in the world but the US population of drivers seems largely immune to both of these things for driving a car.

A lot of people see driving a car as a right, instead of a privilege it is (or should be). It goes hand in hand with little required training and lenient punishments.

The dangerous parts of flying are landing and take off. Everything else is safe.

This is not the case near Russian airspace.

That's why SFO to Delhi is routed more towards the eastern part of Russia after the war.

Flying can become safer WHILE also having more number of accidents, by just having more people fly now than ever.

Variance sometimes comes in groups.

No and yes.

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