Arnt Karlsen writes: > > To take a different example, if I could show that more people die > > every year from falling off chairs than from high-altitude mountain > > climbing without oxygen, would that prove that sitting on a chair is > > more dangerous? > > ..reminds me of the safest mode of human transportation counting > passenger mileage: babies crawling on the floor is a close 2'nd, > _despite_ the Hindenburg. ;-)
Even though this is off-topic, I'll continue just a bit further with some fun but totally unconfirmed numbers I've heard, since they're probably of general interest. First, while flying on a scheduled air carrier is much safer than driving per passenger mile, flying with a private pilot is seven times more dangerous than driving -- in other words, it's roughly comparable to riding a motorcycle. Gender equality does not rule in private flying. While a male driver is only about twice as likely as a female driver to get into a fatal car accident, a male private pilot is eight times more likely as a female private pilot to get into a fatal plane accident. That suggests that you're safer per mile flying in a small plane with a female private pilot than you are driving in a car with a man. It also suggests that flying accidents are much more under the pilot's control than driving accidents, since the gender gap is so much larger. Some day I'll do the proper research to see if the numbers I've heard are accurate. We know that it's young male drivers who cause the most car accidents, but many private pilots are older, so it's unlikely just to be the young-buck thing. My guess is that (on average) men just have a harder time admitting they're wrong than women do. Fatal plane accidents can happen gradually, as the result of a long chain of bad decisions and other problems -- there are often many points where the pilot could have saved him or herself by turning back, waiting a couple of hours for better weather, choosing a different altitude or route, making an extra fuel stop, etc. Maybe women as a group are just better at doing that kind of thing. All the best, David _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
