From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 09 2002 - 20:52:41 MDT
On Sun, Jul 07, 2002 at 02:59:36PM -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> Damien Sullivan wrote:
> > I really doubt that. A few thousand people died on 9/11. Tens of thousands
> > of people die in car accidents a year. Not counting the crippled survivors.
>
> Normally, only a few hundred people die a year on aircraft accidents in
> the US (not counting crippled survivors). 9/11 was alone ten times that
> number (again, not counting the crippled survivors). Car accidents kill
Let's call "a few hundred" 300. I'm under the impression around 3000 people
died on 9/11. But at most 1600 of them could have been on the planes -- 4
liners at 400 people. Except we know those flights were selected for not
having many people on them, so most of those 3000 are from WTC. Meaning
they're totally irrelevant for comparing the safety of driving and flying;
they weren't flying.
> The problem, though, is that far more people drive than fly. There are
> on average only 32,000 flights each day, with a little less than a half
> million people in the air. Tens of millions of people drive each day on
There's an average of 10-15 people per flight?
Anyway, the safety statistics aren't "more people die on the road"; it's that
planes and buses have lower mortality rates per X than driving. 9/11 by
itself won't change that, whether X is passenger miles or flights.
-xx- Damien X-)
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