Road versus Air travel-which is safer ?

sovtek

El Stuntman wrote:

in the most advanced parts of the world, governments tend to entrust such things to those that know how to do them i.e. private firms

I guess that's why where they have the most severe form of private ownership of airlines the safety record is the worst.

sovtek

El Stuntman wrote:

please elaborate further on this, I am intrigued! Which countries/regions do you consider to have the most privatised air travel markets and by extension (according to you) the worst safety records?

American carriers are private although heavily subsidized companies. Their over all safety record is worse than the European carriers.

sovtek,if you want to go down that route...
How many crashes have ryanair had ?

You do know that statistically,you are more likely to die in a car crash than in an airplane crash-and cars aren't nationalised...
Though I do recall a state owned car driving Eamonn O' Caoimh (iirc) crashing.

sovtek

Tristrame wrote:

sovtek,if you want to go down that route...
How many crashes have ryanair had ?

I guess you missed the "over all" part. That's one airline that must adhere to European safety standards. In America the safety standards are basically dictated by the industry.

You do know that statistically,you are more likely to die in a car crash than in an airplane crash-and cars aren't nationalised...
Though I do recall a state owned car driving Eamonn O' Caoimh (iirc) crashing.

No you are not more likely to die in a car crash. Cars have a much better survivability rate than planes. Cars have also had their safety record improve over the past 30 years. Commercial airplanes haven't.

El Stuntman

sovtek wrote:

American carriers are private although heavily subsidized companies. Their over all safety record is worse than the European carriers.

so US private carriers have worse safety records than say, African or South American, publicly-owned carriers?

sovtek

irish1 wrote:

I travelled to China with BA but got an Aer Lingus flight to Heathrow how would they have known I was transferring to BA once they have left the One World alliance.

Oh and you are more likely to die falling out of bed than on an airplane.

That's merely because you statistically fall out of bed more than you fly. Your survivability in a crash are next to nil.

sovtek

El Stuntman wrote:

so US private carriers have worse safety records than say, African or South American, publicly-owned carriers?

I don't know how it compares but I've only heard of SAA having one crash in the nineties. Otherwise you are comparing apples and oranges and you know it.

jmayo

sovtek wrote:

That's merely because you statistically fall out of bed more than you fly. Your survivability in a crash are next to nil.

I know some pilots (non airline bush pilots and instructors) that fly almost everyday. Work in multiple takeoffs and landings (good to have the same number of each), then they probably land/takeoff more times than they get out of bed over the course of average week. Not sure if their insurance companies looked at this whne accessing their policy premiums ?

El Stuntman

sovtek wrote:

That's merely because you statistically fall out of bed more than you fly. Your survivability in a crash are next to nil.

so don't fly then

stop trying to derail this topic with unsubstantiated waffle

sovtek

sovtek wrote:

No you are not more likely to die in a car crash. Cars have a much better survivability rate than planes. Cars have also had their safety record improve over the past 30 years. Commercial airplanes haven't.

I think if you look into it,more people die by a country mile from car crashes than airplane crashes every year.

Lets stay on topic though-you can start a thread on that in the commuting and transport forum and I'll gladly contribute.

sovtek

Tristrame wrote:

I think if you look into it,more people die by a country mile from car crashes than airplane crashes every year.

Because more people take more car trips than they fly so that stat is irrelevant. Even if flying were more safe than other forms of travel it doesn't take away from the fact that European carriers have an over all better safety record than American.

sovtek

El Stuntman wrote:

so don't fly then

stop trying to derail this topic with unsubstantiated waffle

I'm not the one who brought up the "safest way to travel" argument...and it's substantiated. BTW lose the insulting tone. My statement was this mess is a result of privatizing a public asset and integral part of public transport.

markpb

sovtek wrote:

I'm not the one who brought up the "safest way to travel" argument...and it's substantiated.

In the US, each year there are about 40,000 deaths per year in automobile accidents vs. about 200 in air transport. To put this in perspective, the chance of dying in an automobile accident is about 1000 times more than winning a typical state lottery in a year.
[...]
You can go to the National Transportation Safety board website (http://www.itsasafety.org) to do some research or look at a summary table here. According to the latter, each year in the US 1 out of 6800 drivers dies in an auto accident. The rate for airline passengers is 1 in 1.6 million. The same table shows that per passenger mile, air travel is safer by more than a factor of two.
[...]
The survival rate is much lower for an airplane crash but airplanes don't crash as much as cars.

From http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen99/gen99845.htm.

sovtek

markpb wrote:

From http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen99/gen99845.htm.

I'm just going to say that your table actually supports what I'm saying. 1.3 per million vehicle miles next to 1.9 per 100 million air miles. I noticed that working kills twice as many as either one. :P

markpb

sovtek wrote:

I'm just going to say that your table actually supports what I'm saying. 1.3 per million vehicle miles next to 1.9 per 100 million air miles. I noticed that working kills twice as many as either one. :P

And if you'd read the notes at the bottom of the page, you'd see:

Since the average number of passengers in an aircraft far exceeds the average number of passengers in a motor vehicle, the passenger mile risk of air carrier transportation is significantly less than that of motor vehicle transportation.

Sorry mods, don't mean to drag this further off-topic.

On topic, I think there'll be much grinding of teeth in present government that they didn't sell of the whole of Aer Lingus while they were at it. There's still be pressure from the lobby groups to "do something" but at least then they'd have plausibility. Now they have Willie's moustache and MOL hounding them which isn't a fun situation for anyone to be in.

Moving this tangent to a new thread and then over to the commuting and transport forum.

ressem

sovtek wrote:

American carriers are private although heavily subsidized companies. Their over all safety record is worse than the European carriers.

A site listing accident rates
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm
doesn't appear to bear this out.

Southwest for example has 14 million flights with a reported fatality once when a plane skidded off the runway during a snowstorm and hit a car, one of whose passengers died.

projectmayhem

sovtek wrote:

No you are not more likely to die in a car crash. Cars have a much better survivability rate than planes. Cars have also had their safety record improve over the past 30 years. Commercial airplanes haven't.

survivability rate? that's counting the number of car crashes with the number of deaths in those crashes versus planes crashing & the deaths involved. most car crashes are bumps and grinds, whereas planes crashing would be a fairly large event and in a lot of cases people will be killed... but there's less planes crashing then cars... so the "survivability rate" is a non point.

as well as that, aircraft pilots are well trained, and part of their training is to deal with unexpected situations (engine failure, etc.), and there are people watching out for them to make sure they don't crash into each other (air traffic controllers)... whereas cars can be driven by any dolt, and there's no way of tracking car movement to make sure they don't smash into each other every 5 minutes, which seems to happen these days.

Hotblack Desiato

The most dangerous thing a commercial pilot does every day is... drive to the airport.