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PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

Worth noting that the per-mile and per-trip stats are different. Planes have low per-mile rates because nobody sane is using a plane to get across town. They only use planes for long-distance trips where driving/taking the train isn’t feasible. So by default, planes will have low per-mile rates because virtually every trip is a high mileage event. In short, planes drastically water down their per-mile averages.

When you look at it from a per-trip viewpoint, cars are safer. Which makes sense. You drive to work hundreds of times per year, but maybe ride a plane twice? So a single car crash is going to be a drop in the bucket when compared to the thousands of car trips you’ve taken in your life, but a single plane crash will be a massive spike in the numbers.

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BrownianMotion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
In 95% of all car accidents, the driver has eaten carrot in the week prior to the accident.

you may now draw your own conclusion

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- xthexder@l.sw0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  TIL 95% of people eat carrots at least once a week.
  
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  - Klear@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I certainly don’t eat them nearly as often. I also don’t drive, so that checks out.
    
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raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Additional consideration: How safe a car trip is, can be influenced a lot by the driver. As a frequent driver (I wished I could use trains instead, but our train system regularly sucks for many connections :( ), I feel that 95+ per cent of accidents could be avoided if the driver was driving careful themselves plus anticipating the errors of other drivers. I get into so many situations that could be dangerous for me as well, but I typically avoid the danger because I see the crazy people maneuvers coming before they execute them. My hopes are that on the occasions when I make a driving mistake, someone else will be there to watch out for me as well.

Long story short: In a plane, you\re putting your life into someone else’s hand. In a car, you at least have the illusion of control, but I claim that you actually do have some control over avoiding accidents.

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- TWeaK@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The same could be said of issues with flights. The difference is you’re not the driver, but also there are many, many more layers of safety in flying.
  
  Only one thing has to go wrong for a car crash, which could easily be completely out of control of the driver and their vehicle (eg another driver). Several things have to go wrong for a plane to crash, the holes in many layers of Swiss cheese have to align.
  
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  - raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    Only one thing has to go wrong for a car crash, which could easily be completely out of control of the driver and their vehicle (eg another driver). Several things have to go wrong for a plane to crash, the holes in many layers of Swiss cheese have to align.
    
    True, but statistically, the cases where a single thing going wrong causes an accident make up only a tiny fraction of car accidents. And freak accidents like “rockfall as you exit a tunnel” can also happen to planes - e.g. being shot out of the sky by russian war criminals.
    
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    TWeaK@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    True, but statistically, the cases where a single thing going wrong causes an accident make up only a tiny fraction of car accidents.
    
    I doubt that’s true. I think most car accidents are caused when people aren’t paying enough attention - a single person doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do. Airline travel has built in redundancies - the two pilots only have to focus their attention fully during takeoff and landing, at altitude they have a few thousand feet to get back in control of any situation but below 10,000 feet they have a sterile cockpit with no casual conversation. Hell, a plane can lose all of its engines due to a bird strike and still manage to fly, in one case landing intact in a river with no fatalities. Then there’s maintenance, airplanes are so well looked after that we identified a very clever (yet worryingly extensive) scam of fraudulent parts, before any accident happend as a result of them.
    
    Airlines are far, far more prepared than drivers are. Obviously airlines have worse situations to prepare for, but they prepare so well that the overall risk (likelihood x severity) is lower.
    
    Still, I see no Boeing CEO charged with murder - or even manslaughter.
    
    Half the Boeing CEO’s came from McDonnell Douglas, and with them they brought their habit of ignoring issues at the design stage then denying them until at least two fatal accidents have occurred. If they got away with it then there’s no reason they won’t continue to - but that’s more of a symptom of corporate Wall St than airline manufacturers specifically. Before the merger, Boeing had an excellent reputation as an engineering company and behaved as such.
    
    capitalist corporations are by definition looking to maximize profits
    
    You’re describing a publicly traded company, not necessarily all capitalist corporations. If you privately own a business you can run it into the ground if you like, or just run a little mom & pop shop that keeps its prices low so you break even. CEO’s of public companies are obligated by law to pursue profits.
    
    We’re talking about publicly traded businesses here so that point is somewhat moot, but nonetheless I don’t think you’ve demonstrated that all airliners looking to cut corners criminally. They certainly want profits - who doesn’t - but most manage to stay well within the bounds of the law and safety standards. When they don’t, the level of detailed investigation we get and the attention we pay might make it seem less safe, but it actually proves just how much safer the industry is.
    
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nBodyProblem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
If you are considering two modes of transportation for a airplane-suitable trip, the per-trip stat is effectively irrelevant. If we consider a 1,000 mile trip and want to choose the safest manner of travel to the destination aircraft will statistically be the safest transportation method.

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Ryantific_theory@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Thank you, PM_Your_Nudes_Please, for an wonderfully insightful comment on the nature of statistics in transportation accidents.

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wantd2B1ofthestrokes@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I don’t really agree. If I have two choices to make a long distance trip, drive or fly, it is safer to fly. If I’m going to the grocery store, there’s no option to fly, so using those type of trips in the calculation doesn’t make sense.

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IDriveWhileTired@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Do you have any statistics about the total number of miles driven by cars every day vs. miles flown by planes daily? Somehow, just based on the amount of cars worldwide, I’d bet that there are far more miles driven by cars daily than miles flown by planes, so accidents per mile would still be a significant statistic. Because even though planes fligh thousands of miles per trip, cars are numbered in millions, in the US alone. So I’d bet that if every car trip was one mile, which is very conservative, you’d still have more miles driven daily than flown in the US. Which makes deaths per mile a lot more scary.

Accidents per trip would be relevant as well, but how many commercial airliners crash every day vs. how many cars crash every day? How many people die a year from commercial airline crashes vs. from car crashes? I’d bet that even per trip cars are less safe than planes.

I live in a mostly rural area, and we have had 4 deaths on the motorway nearby over the past 3 or 4 months. And that is just in one region,with low to moderate traffic and low population density (lots of farms and woods around here). Also, never knew anyone who died in a plane crash, in over 40 years, but have had 2 close friends die in car crashes, never mind acquaintances or friends of friends. And I bet everyone, in developing or developed countries, knows someone who died in a car crash, whereas I’d bet that most people don’t have even acquaintances or friend of friends that died in plane crashes.

So I’d really like to see numbers on that claim that, per trip, cars are safer, because in 2021, with no deaths from commercial planes in the US, that claim does not stand, because you could have an infinite number of car trips that year, and still be less safe than commercial planes with one single dead person.

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