Planes are the safest form of transportation if you look at safety per km travelled. If you look at other metrics, like safety per trip or per travel time then they are less safe than busses or trains.
Planes have nonetheless huge advantages over the others, like if you have to travel hundreds of km, or across the ocean.
Cruising through the Atlantic in a Greyhound would be wild, though.
As with all statistics, you can make the numbers say what we you want. Planes can carry 500+ people, so an incident risks all 500 of those passengers; similar for rail, but not so much for the bus. And I think about bus and there’s two different kinds of buses, IMO, the inner city bus that’s on the road for hours, but doing few miles while making frequent stops. Not sure what a journey is then, whether it’s stop by stop or from start to finish. And there’s
So yeah, I dunno. If it’s your time it’s your time. I don’t think any of these means of travel are “unsafe,” whatever that means. But I’ll still have a couple of beers before I get on the plane, because I’m not afraid of flying, but having a couple beers beforehand makes it better.
Last time I posted something about this, it was downvoted to oblivion. Glad to see that didn’t happen here. There are some statistical quirks that make this obvious once you think about it though.
Planes tend to make long trips, so anything measured on a per-km basis is going to be wildly diluted. Nobody is taking a plane to travel a few blocks. Something like a car will tend to make much shorter (but more frequent) trips, so the per-km stat won’t be diluted. But inversely, the per-trip stat will be diluted with cars, purely because they’re used much more often.
Everyone wants to shit on motorcycles, but it’s as much a red herring as a meaningful statement. You might as well mention that horse riding is 25x more dangerous than motorcycles. And if you really want to get into the weeds, go look up how many motorcycle fatalities are single vehicle accidents, and how many of those are due to speeding or alcohol involvement. So if you don’t drink, and don’t act like a fool, you’re really not all that badly off. Still worse than being in a steel cage for protection, but it’s not only for people “who don’t want to get old.”
I was commenting on the vast difference in the statistical numbers. I have no doubt there are lots of steps that can be taken to decrease the risk of shortened lifespan.
But yes, we can safely engage in high-risk behavior (or in some instances like air racing pilots, come to terms that they will likely (and preferably) end their lives explosively and spectacularly). And then there’s how James Cameron does super-deep submersible exploration vs. Stockton Rush.
My mother would not only climb up rock faces and summit mountains all over the Sierra Nevadas (and later in other parts of the world) but would lug twenty five pounds of old-school photography gear to show she did it and took pics of the astounding vistas. As a kid I went along with her sometimes, and encountered a few two many poison oak pushes, mosquito swarms, and stories about lost bits due to frostbite. I Belong To The City now (I belong to the night).
Planes are the safest form of transportation if you look at safety per km travelled. If you look at other metrics, like safety per trip or per travel time then they are less safe than busses or trains.
https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/184330
Planes have nonetheless huge advantages over the others, like if you have to travel hundreds of km, or across the ocean. Cruising through the Atlantic in a Greyhound would be wild, though.
As with all statistics, you can make the numbers say what we you want. Planes can carry 500+ people, so an incident risks all 500 of those passengers; similar for rail, but not so much for the bus. And I think about bus and there’s two different kinds of buses, IMO, the inner city bus that’s on the road for hours, but doing few miles while making frequent stops. Not sure what a journey is then, whether it’s stop by stop or from start to finish. And there’s
So yeah, I dunno. If it’s your time it’s your time. I don’t think any of these means of travel are “unsafe,” whatever that means. But I’ll still have a couple of beers before I get on the plane, because I’m not afraid of flying, but having a couple beers beforehand makes it better.
Have to admit this is kind of funny.
Last time I posted something about this, it was downvoted to oblivion. Glad to see that didn’t happen here. There are some statistical quirks that make this obvious once you think about it though.
Planes tend to make long trips, so anything measured on a per-km basis is going to be wildly diluted. Nobody is taking a plane to travel a few blocks. Something like a car will tend to make much shorter (but more frequent) trips, so the per-km stat won’t be diluted. But inversely, the per-trip stat will be diluted with cars, purely because they’re used much more often.
Bus and Rail rules.
Motorcycles are for the young who don’t want to get old.
Everyone wants to shit on motorcycles, but it’s as much a red herring as a meaningful statement. You might as well mention that horse riding is 25x more dangerous than motorcycles. And if you really want to get into the weeds, go look up how many motorcycle fatalities are single vehicle accidents, and how many of those are due to speeding or alcohol involvement. So if you don’t drink, and don’t act like a fool, you’re really not all that badly off. Still worse than being in a steel cage for protection, but it’s not only for people “who don’t want to get old.”
I was commenting on the vast difference in the statistical numbers. I have no doubt there are lots of steps that can be taken to decrease the risk of shortened lifespan.
But yes, we can safely engage in high-risk behavior (or in some instances like air racing pilots, come to terms that they will likely (and preferably) end their lives explosively and spectacularly). And then there’s how James Cameron does super-deep submersible exploration vs. Stockton Rush.
My mother would not only climb up rock faces and summit mountains all over the Sierra Nevadas (and later in other parts of the world) but would lug twenty five pounds of old-school photography gear to show she did it and took pics of the astounding vistas. As a kid I went along with her sometimes, and encountered a few two many poison oak pushes, mosquito swarms, and stories about lost bits due to frostbite. I Belong To The City now (I belong to the night).