From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Jul 10 2002 - 14:59:24 MDT
Damien Sullivan wrote:
>
> 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.
Yes, however, there also were OTHER airline crashes last year outside of
9/11. So far as I know, the airline deaths on 9/11 were somewhere around
700. Tack on a crash earlier in the year, plus the airbus that lost it's
tail over brooklyn after 9/11.
At the very least, it was more dangerous to fly during the week of 9/11
than to drive.
>
> > 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?
When most are puddle jumpers, yes, the average tends quite low. However,
I think the 'in the air' statistic may be 'at any given time', rather
than per day.
>
> 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.
Airline risk is normally somewhere around 0.02 deaths per 100,000
passenger hours while driving risk is somewhere around 0.3-0.6, I think.
Anyone with recent stats? Civil aviation (cessnas, etc) tend around
0.04, as I recall.
This is evidently a matter of a factor of 20-30 or so, under normal
circumstances. As people change their flying and driving habits, this
will change, along with congestion of roads and skies.
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