Gut und seriös ist auch diese Studie:
For GA accident stats, we'll use the 2005 Nall Report
(available at
https://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/nall.html), which
reports on accidents from calendar year 2004.
For driving, we'll use 2004 statistics from the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), available
here.
According to the Nall report, in 2004:
- there were 1413 GA fixed-wing accidents
- of these accidents, 290 involved fatalities
- these fatal accidents accounted for 510 fatalities
- the FAA estimates 25.9M GA flight hours
According to the NHTSA, in 2004:
- there were 6.1M accidents
- 1.9M involved injuries
- 38253 involved fatalities
- there were 42636 fatalities in motor vehicle accidents, breaking down to:
- 33134 "occupants" (car/truck drivers and passengers)
- 4008 "motorcycle riders"
- 5494 "non-occupants" (e.g. pedestrians)
- an estimated 2.9T vehicle miles traveled
- an estimated 10.0B motorcycle vehicle miles traveled.
So in 2004, 510 people died in 290 GA accidents, while 42636 died in
6.1M motor vehicle accidents. Of course, to determine risk level,
we have to convert this into a rate, as there was a whole lot more
driving done in 2004 than there was GA plane flying.
Comparison
Let's compare the rate of fatal accidents to the amount of flying/driving
done.
For GA, there were 11.2 fatal accidents and 19.7 fatalities per
million hours of flying.
For motor vehicles, there were 1.32 fatal accidents and 1.47 fatalities
per 100M miles.
Note, though, that about 13% of these fatalities were
pedestrians, and so weren't actually engaged in driving. Also note
that motorcycles have a much higher fatality rate than cars/trucks,
namely 38.8 fatalities per 100M miles, over 25 times higher than the
average, so these numbers are a bit inflated when it comes to determining
the risk of an occupant of a car or truck.
Of course, the next hurdle we face is that our flying accident rate is
based on the number of hours, while the driving accident rate is
based on miles driven. To directly compare them, we have to either
pick an average speed for GA aircraft and compare by hours, or else
pick an average speed for cars, and compare by miles. We'll try both
of these approaches.
GA flying covers small training aircraft capable of cruising at 100mph,
and business jets capable of cruising at several hundred miles per
hour, so choosing an average cruise speed is difficult, but for the
sake of argument, we'll choose 150mph. This gives us a comparison of:
- GA: 7.46 fatal accidents and 13.1 fatalities per 100M miles
- driving: 1.32 fatal accidents and 1.47 fatalities per 100M miles
So when compared on a mile to mile basis, flying has 5.6 times as
many fatal accidents, and 8.9 times as many fatalities (these number
would be even worse for flying if we took out motorcyle and pedestrian
fatalities).
How about if we compare on an "hour to hour" basis? That requires
an assumption of an average speed for autos. We'll choose 40mph.
This leads to the following numbers:
- GA: 11.2 fatal accidents and 19.7 fatalities per million hours
- driving: .528 fatal accidents and .588 fatalities per million hours
On this basis, flying has 21 times the number of fatal accidents and
33.5 times the number of fatalities per hour of operation.
