Lies, damn lies and statistics
How safe is flying?
Safe?
Wikipedia have an interesting, and well referenced, entry on Air Safety. Within that entry is a table showing comparing deaths by air to other forms of travel.
The table in Wikipedia is much easier to read, it’s here, but the data is shown below for those that do not want to click through.
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There are three main statistics which may be used to compare the safety of various forms of travel:
| Deaths per billion journeys | |
|---|---|
| Bus | 4.3 |
| Rail | 20 |
| Van | 20 |
| Car | 40 |
| Foot | 40 |
| Water | 90 |
| Air | 117 |
| Bicycle | 170 |
| Motorcycle | 1640 |
| Deaths per billion hours | |
|---|---|
| Bus | 11.1 |
| Rail | 30 |
| Air | 30.8 |
| Water | 50 |
| Van | 60 |
| Car | 130 |
| Foot | 220 |
| Bicycle | 550 |
| Motorcycle | 4840 |
| Deaths per billion kilometres | |
|---|---|
| Air | 0.05 |
| Bus | 0.4 |
| Rail | 0.6 |
| Van | 1.2 |
| Water | 2.6 |
| Car | 3.1 |
| Bicycle | 44.6 |
| Foot | 54.2 |
| Motorcycle | 108.9 |
It is worth noting that the air industry’s insurers base their calculations on the number of deaths per journey statistic while the industry itself generally uses the number of deaths per kilometre statistic in press releases.
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Interesting to see how air travel varies in terms of comparative safety depending on how it is measured. But also interesting to see that however it is measured, riding a motorbike doesn’t come out so well.
Finally, that word’ billion’ is too easy to throw away, as it were. A billion hours ago was over a 114,000 years ago – when mankind was living in the Stone Age. A billion kilometres would represent 114,285 trips between London and Los Angeles.
If you are interested!
By Paul Handover
Paul Handover
