Photo: Luis Argerich
A person with an irrational fear of flying is frequently told “you’re more likely to die driving to the airport than on the flight†– is this actually true or just calming words?
Let’s look at some statistics
From the perspective of a passenger in the car/airplane:
- Driving = 1 fatality per 88 million miles driven (excluding motorcycles which have a 25 times higher death rate and any pedestrians/bikers killed by cars)
- Scheduled flights (mainly airlines) = 1 fatality per 64 million miles flown
(These numbers would skew in favor of airplanes if you cared about how many people were transported. But, knowing my readers as well as I do, you only care about yourself.)
It looks like the expected value of death favors driving, but I would argue that you should be trying to avoid fatal accidents all together – if you are in one, it is a crap shoot whether or not you are the one that dies. This is definitely not a situation I want to be in, otherwise I would play Russian Roulette.
- Driving = 1 fatal accident every 76 million miles driven
- Scheduled flights = 1 fatal accident every 2 billion miles flown
What are the odds of surviving this so called Russian Roulette?
Each fatal plane crash averages over 30 deaths, which is only 42% of the passengers on the flights. On the other hand each fatal driving accident averages 1.15 driver/passenger deaths. Unfortunately it is harder to track the number of occupants or even cars involved in these collisions. My approximation is 3 people involved – most cars have only the driver aboard, and the ones that do not are offset by solo car crashes. If the number is 2.75, this would equal the 42% survival rate for being in a fatal plan crash. Pretty darn close!
