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Well this is why we can't always trust our intuition, sometimes our instinct just doesn't turn out to be true. Stats, while derided by many, are not necessarily useless.
A plane has 4 engines, for example, whereas a car has just one. Why is this? Because a car's engine can break down and all that happens is the car stops moving. If one engine breaks down on a plane, it still has 3 other engines to keep it going to a safe landing.
In fact, it can glide without ANY engines for several miles just on inertia and the fact that it is 30,000 feet in the air.
I'd rather something go wrong when I'm grounded in my car though.
Lets take these 2 scenarios.
1. I'm in my car and I catch a flat. I either pull off and change it myself or call for assistance and have someone else do it.
2. I'm in a plane and upon decending the pilot discovers the landing gear isnt opening up in which case YOU'RE TOTALLY SCREWED!!! Now there are procedures for such a thing but they are very risky which can lead to a crash/explosion/etc upon landing.
Now I'm not against air travel as I travel by air 3-4 times per year. I just dont agree with the entire notion that its the safest form of travel. Statistically there are faaar fewer plane crashes but when a plane does crash it usually comes with everyone on board dying.
Your "logic" is, well, completely illogical. You can "disagree" with it but you'll still be wrong.
I don't much like flying (used to be terrified of it, then had to fly so often I just got over the fear -- now it's more boring than anything else), but I know that it is incredibly safe. It FEELS less safe than when you are driving in your own car because there you FEEL like you're in control (although you aren't fully in control, of course, given that you have to share the road with others!). It also feels less scary to be on the ground. But those things don't negate the statistics on air safety versus car safety. Please, please, use a little bit of logic here.
There are a few other considerations when assessing safety:
There is an expectation that airplane travel would be more dangerous than automobile travel. An airplane goes much faster, an airplane travels in 3 dimensions as opposed to an automobile traveling in 2, an airplane can't simply pull over to the side of the road if a problem occurs, etc. So comparing the two forms of travel is as problematic as comparing elevator travel with automobile travel: you would automatically assume that elevator travel is safer. But with automobile and airplanes, the reverse is true: you wouldn't expect air travel to be safer than automobile travel, so the fact that it is elicits a sense of disbelief in the observer.
The nature of crashes are different. Deadly airplane crashes are generally the result of one plane crashing into the ground alone due to mechanical, pilot, weather, etc. Automobile crashes are generally the result of 2 or more meeting each other at high speed, which is very rare in aviation. So, to be more accurate, one would need to ask two questions: 1. Are you safer in an airplane or automobile with a mechanical (or weather, operator, etc.) problem? and 2. Are you safer in an airplane or automobile at meeting another airplane or automobile at a high speed?
I'm a pilot and I feel much safer in a plane than a car. Why? Because colliding with another car while driving is a constant, immenent threat. I feel safer taking of in an airplane than I do merging with traffic. On the other hand, if I had a significant mechanical problem, I would much rather it occur in a car than an airplane.
As a former acft mechanic (F4, C141, C5) it makes me feel better (cuz I'm not the most confident flyer) that airplanes have so many back-up systems, Auto, emergency, manual... valves or switches that can shut off sections of a system if there's a leak or failure so the rest of the system can continue to operate and take over for the disabled section...
Airplanes are pretty safe. Human error can be tricky.
When I was an instructor in the F-16 I was the phase manager to a low-altitude task management program. In aviation risk is carefully managed, particularly in professional (read as military or commercial) aviation. There is little to no such program in the automotive world. Pilots have flight plans, scheduled or phased maintenance, annual or even semi-annual physicals, simulators with procedural training, updated flight and instruction manuals, upgrades... the list can go on to another page. For the average Joe driving a car, he gets a license at 16, and that may, in many jurisdictions, be the last time he's ever evaluated for proficiency. No emphasis on risk management or resource management... just put on a pair of pajama bottoms and a sweat shirt and drive to the convenience store, still groggy from the night before, to the C-store.
Agreed! I feel much safer on the ground, regardless of what the statistics say. And I think the statistics might be a little skewed, because they compare travel miles I believe. And jets traveling at 600 MPH obviously travel each mile faster than cars traveling 65 MPH, so naturally, traveling by car exposes you to more drive time than traveling by air. But is that best way to compare air travel to car travel?
What other way is there? You have to go to point X. The chances of arriving alive is Y% if you choose to fly, Z% if you choose to drive. In almost every scenario, Y>Z.
Quote:
Originally Posted by deevel79
1. I'm in my car and I catch a flat. I either pull off and change it myself or call for assistance and have someone else do it.
2. I'm in a plane and upon decending the pilot discovers the landing gear isnt opening up in which case YOU'RE TOTALLY SCREWED!!! Now there are procedures for such a thing but they are very risky which can lead to a crash/explosion/etc upon landing.
Landing w/o gear is not particularly risky - hard on the aircraft, but the biggest risk to passengers come when evacuating.
I'd rather something go wrong when I'm grounded in my car though.
Lets take these 2 scenarios.
1. I'm in my car and I catch a flat. I either pull off and change it myself or call for assistance and have someone else do it.
2. I'm in a plane and upon decending the pilot discovers the landing gear isnt opening up in which case YOU'RE TOTALLY SCREWED!!! Now there are procedures for such a thing but they are very risky which can lead to a crash/explosion/etc upon landing.
Now I'm not against air travel as I travel by air 3-4 times per year. I just dont agree with the entire notion that its the safest form of travel. Statistically there are faaar fewer plane crashes but when a plane does crash it usually comes with everyone on board dying.
Depending on where you have the flat and where you decide to change it and what time of day it is and the amount of traffic at the time; you are at greater risk of getting hit by someone and injured or killed than the pilot not knowing how to land the airplane as safe as possible without landing gear.
There are a couple of fallacies in reasoning going on here.
I see some betrayal aversion - when an item or system is designed to increase safety, or purports to increase safety, any failure in that item or system invokes a very strong, not necessarily appropriate reaction. So a plane crash creates these massive feelings of terror that a car crash doesn't, and your brain rejects the item that is statistically safer.
The big example used to explain betrayal aversion is seatbelts. How many people do you know that tell some fictitious or incredibly rare story about someone who died "because" of their seatbelt, or survived "because" they weren't wearing it, and completely ignore that they are far far more likely to be saved by it than harmed? They are being emotional, not logical, going off of what scares them more. There is a feeling of betrayal in that a safety device was perceived to cause harm, so the observer ends up embracing the more dangerous choice.
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