Geofa,Give me a break please. This is AOPA and they have their own agenda. I respect them but please... don't spin the numbers for me.I rather go straight to the source - the NTSB which has both air and ground (GA too) and you can easily translate hours flown into miles -100 KTS or even 300 KTS - take your pick, take the number that looks better to you. Anyway, I am going to state one more time and I am done - I never questioned your GA data in your original post above, I questioned only your "Auto" data which was off by about ... 1000 times. :(

If you call quoting the number spin so be it. I have never found aopa to have an agenda when it comes to safety and their nab report seems respected by all.If you are going to compare hours to miles it is a problem. There is no "easy" way to translate that-but it seems there are many organizations that have. A google search brings them up...and there seems to be a quite a debate how to "translate" such numbers.It makes a very interesting read and it seems all can "spin" the stats like all stats anyway they want.My point is-if you are going to compare hours to miles-that is not right. You either compare hours to hours, or miles to miles.

It makes a very interesting read and it seems all can "spin" the stats like all stats anyway they want.

Spinning the stat---Unlike you, I've known eight pilots who have died in GA accidents (not including professional aerobatic or racing pilots). This number doesn't include passengers. However, none of these was in a Cessna 172. Therfore, the 172 must be safer.....BTW--- none of these were from airframe or engine failures. A few were from aerobatics that went wrong. Flying into the infamous black hole & loosing ground reference. Taking off during a high density altitude time of day because of a medical emergency.L.Adamson

My point is-if you are going to compare hours to miles-that is not right.

At this point I am NOT comparing anything, I am not even trying. You deliberately twist or omit what I was saying or ... is my English that bad? I only said you horribly inflated traffic accidents. Did you write this:Auto=69,974 miles per fatalityWho wrote this if may I ask? I still see your name next to post #23 in this thread.Whoever wrote this one line missed the actual number by about 1000 times (more than 1000). A truthful line would read instead something like this:Auto=78,000,000 miles per fatality (roughly) Does it take university degree to see the difference between these two lines in bold? This glaring absurdity made me join this discussion, otherwise I would not have said a word. So before we can start even comparing we have to agree on raw numbers. If you artificially increase road accident rate 1000 TIMES there is no point to compare anything.Richard Collins of FLYING went through those stats very well, he even isolated GA accident flown by professional crews from accidents caused by pilots like us. The numbers weren't very good. Piston-engine flying in GA is dangerous, many times more dangerous than driving a car. No spinning by AOPA or anyone else will change this basic fact, by the way I am far from throwing stones at this article - it is nice bed-time reading, light article, written with "poetic" license, not meant to be interpreted as even half-serious or complete dissertation on aircraft accidents. Really serious look at the numbers in GA you could get from old issues of FLYING with a good dose of commentary.

So to put it short:It is saver to fly a certain distance in a plane than to drive the same distance in a car...butit is saver to drive in a car for a certain time than to fly fly the same amount of time in a plane!This also means that in most cases the drive to the airport is saver than the flight itself (as long as you don't live hundreds of miles from the airport)!Wolfgang

At this point I am NOT comparing anything, I am not even trying. You deliberately twist or omit what I was saying or ... is my English that bad? I only said you horribly inflated traffic accidents. Did you write this:Auto=69,974 miles per fatalityWho wrote this if may I ask? I still see your name next to post #23 in this thread.Whoever wrote this one line missed the actual number by about 1000 times (more than 1000). A truthful line would read instead something like this:Auto=78,000,000 miles per fatality (roughly) Does it take university degree to see the difference between these two lines in bold? This glaring absurdity made me join this discussion, otherwise I would not have said a word. So before we can start even comparing we have to agree on raw numbers. If you artificially increase road accident rate 1000 TIMES there is no point to compare anything.Richard Collins of FLYING went through those stats very well, he even isolated GA accident flown by professional crews from accidents caused by pilots like us. The numbers weren't very good. Piston-engine flying in GA is dangerous, many times more dangerous than driving a car. No spinning by AOPA or anyone else will change this basic fact, by the way I am far from throwing stones at this article - it is nice bed-time reading, light article, written with "poetic" license, not meant to be interpreted as even half-serious or complete dissertation on aircraft accidents. Really serious look at the numbers in GA you could get from old issues of FLYING with a good dose of commentary.

Michal-it is quite simple.If you compare fatalities per hour for aircraft to auto's per mile-autos look better.If you compare aircraft per mile to autos per mile aircraft come out better-both commercial and ga.The numbers you question are based on readjusting the probability per mile for autos based compared to the hugely lower rate of aircraft per mile (not hours) . I gave you the ntsb link that has the commercial stats-and they are hugely lower when compared per mile. When one increases that hugely lower number to equal one chance of fatality of course the auto number in compare per mile becomes less. e.g. mgh' s numbers show auto travel is safer than even commercials when comparing by 1 million hours of commercial traffic to 1 million miles of car traffic.When one compares miles per aircraft to miles per auto traffic the number takes a huge change and now car travel is hugely more dangerous. This applies also to ga aircraft.I'll try to find the site that in fact published these numbers you dispute when I get back from work-but all I did was google aircraft fatalities per mileI also have read Richard Collins article, and have also read others who feel the opposite. Airliners.net has a whole debate much the same. Comparing by hours, cars look better-including commercial aircraft. Comparing by miles, aircraft come up better. There are some that feel neither is a very good compare, and instead use takeoff's/landings or legs of a trip as a compare. Like all stats, one can use them how one wishes.As I stated above-what interests me more is not hours. The fact is I and most GA pilots would have to live 2-3 lifetimes to reach 100,000 hours and thus hit that 1 chance of dying statistic.What would be valuable would be to correlate the chances somehow with the 45,000 miles I drive in a car per year over a lifetime, with the 50 or so hours I fly as a GA pilot for the last 20 years to a reasonable age I may stop like age 80. I suspect these statistics would show what my life experience has.By the way-this comes from the department of transportation and might be more what the op was after though Ga is not included-note how different the "general population risk"-just another stat :http://www.phmsa.dot.gov/portal/site/PHMSA...vgnextfmt=print

The statistics that are being used do not touch a very, very important factor.The physical number of people physically travelling by both means during the same amount of time. Despite what some of the numbers being presented appear to say, you are far more likely to die in an auto accident than you are in a plane accident.

Geofa is right, and you can't compare miles to hours or convert miles to hours or whatever you did michal. Also try to give him some respect when you post...

If you compare fatalities per hour for aircraft to auto's per mile-autos look better.

You did not understand I single word I wrote, did you?

I'll try to find the site that in fact published these numbers you dispute when I get back from work-but all I did was google aircraft fatalities per mile

Geofa, I think this discussion is pointless. I can see you like to 'google' but don't bother with NTSB data which is there up front, - for both cars and GA aircraft. You said you read Richard Collins and I reckon you disagree with him. OK, at least I know where you stand. Please don't 'google' anything for me.

without having read all the other replies, i'll give you a quick and easy answer:The safety of a flight is reliant on the pilot.If you follow all the guidelines for flying any aircraft, no matter the size, you'll generally be safe ;)

Everything is dangerous. EVERYTHING CAN KILL YOU. Arguing about cars vs GA is simply ridiculous. There are way too many factors that differ to compare the two's accident ratio. To answer the OP's post, yes flying a 172 can be very safe. It is as safe as you make it. That is the thing about any form of aviation. It can be safe; however pilots, mechanics, controllers, etc are all fallible. If you manage the risk you should be fine. Look at large Univ flight schools like ERAU and UND. The 172 is a very stable and secure platform when used property and flown by a pilot whose skill level matches the flight involved. If you match the right airframe and right pilot you can get thousands upon thousands of safe hours out of the aircraft. Take the aircraft/pilot outside of its capability you entered the test pilot phase of your flight and will end up a stat. Also Pierre, it is normal to feel some discomfort each time you get in a cockpit. I had an IP give some of the best advice ever "If you get in a plane and aren't a little scared get out." That little fear will keep you attentive through the flight and keeps you from getting complacent. Just find a good instructor you like and trust and get a good plane then enjoy your lessons. If you need more time to get good at a skill take it. Biggest part is to enjoy your flying.

You did not understand I single word I wrote, did you?Geofa, I think this discussion is pointless. I can see you like to 'google' but don't bother with NTSB data which is there up front, - for both cars and GA aircraft. You said you read Richard Collins and I reckon you disagree with him. OK, at least I know where you stand. Please don't 'google' anything for me.

Michal-a very unfair assesment if I may say so. I think this is an interesting discusion and can continue without a need to proclaim a winner. From the investigation I have done, a case can be made in any way to support either side depending on the data used, and how it is correlated.I did post the Ntsb data on fatal commercial aircraft per mile above (http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table5.htm) which is very different than the stats per hour (they are side by side ) . Notice if you chose to measure by departures instead of hours/miles you can get it to look much more ugly. I am still looking for definitive GA data-which seems difficult to find. The commercial stats can be verfied though, and present certainly a different picture when comparing apples to apples (Miles to miles) and not apples to oranges (hours to miles).As far as GA aircraft-it is understandably difficult to find such data as there is probably no way to log miles of Ga flights reliably. If you know a good source-by all means post it.From another Aopa article: http://www.aopa.org/members/files/pilot/1997/accs9706.html.This article is very balanced and points out the falacy of trusting either of the positions based on these statistics.In this article Aopa states it is virtually impossible to really compare both modes of transportation but that you have 7 times more a chance of having an accident in a car-but they also state that you have 7 more the chance of having a fatality in an aircraft. They also state that if you remove poor weather decisions and maveuvering flight errors you can reduce the fatal aircraft rate to be extremely low. Seems reasonable to me...and now the stat that truly counts-the insurance person...Interesting to me that I pay about $800 a year to insure my car which is worth about $15,000, and has standard liability coverage. I pay $1,100 a year to fly my Baron (total 3x that for three co owners) which is insured for 12x hull value more than the car. I also have a million smooth policy (for those who do not know-most carriers will not even give 1 million smooth, and usually if they do there is a huge premium to get such).Seems that the insurance people have decided my airplane and I are a better risk than my auto. Of course-they won't give this kind of coverage if you don't have an instrument/commercial rating, or have less than 50 hours in type, or have below a certain number of hours, retract time etc.., recency of experience etc. The insurance companies truly run all the statistics-not just a few to determine their risk.I think I'll take their opinion as to the true authority on the relative safety of aircraft to cars-at least in my case. If one wants to stick with the roughly 1.2 chance of dying in 100,000 hours-that is still very small-especially since most GA pilots won't make anywhere close to that number of hours in a lifetime or several.

From another Aopa article: http://www.aopa.org/members/files/pilot/1997/accs9706.html.This article is very balanced .........

Yes, and I have no problem with the main numbers in this article. It is clearly expressed right here:The 1995 fatal GA accident rate per million miles was 0.119. By comparison, the 1994 fatal accident rate for automobiles is much less, at 0.016 per million miles.So yes, driving your car is about 0.119/0.016 =~ 7 times safer than being in a GA aircraft in terms of probability of fatality. This makes for an amazing agreement with everything I wrote before and is very close to what mgh wrote before me.. And by the way, I do not need 2-pages worth of literature to spin these numbers. There are obvious qualifiers but the numbers speak for themselves.

Will re-post

If you die you die. It is going to happen sometime whether in a plane, car, boat or train. Hell the NTSB even has pipeline deaths because those are considered a mode of transportation.The thing people need to focus on is not how safe it is but as pilots how can we make it safer. I always study accident reports and try to learn from others mistakes so I am not in the same position as those ill fated pilots. Flying magazine always has a good aftermath section with 5 or so accident reports and the NTSB's final assessment. Many of them are pilot error and with proper training and situational simulation you can teach pilots to not get themselves into those situations.

Lets's get one thing out of the way first.I gave a figure for the road fatality rate the US in 2008 of 1.27/100M mile. This came directly from the US Department Of Transport in this link http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx . It is equvalent to 78,740,157 miles/accident. This is so far removed from Geofa's figure of 69,974 miles/accident that we are entitled to ask where Geofa got it frome from - it's about 1000 times different from the Department of Transport figure. Also The US Department of Transport states that US drivers average 13,476 miles/year. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm Geofa's value imples drivers would average a fatal accident every 5 - 6 years!It is possible to derive some sensible conclusions from the available data provided we are realistic. Accidents, by definition, occur at random so its not sensible to compare single years - one year may have a major accident involving the loss of several hundred lives: another may be free of any major accidents. For comparative purposes it's only sensible to work with averages. NTSB publishes aircraft accident statistics rom 1989 onwards and the DoT publishes road accident statistics from 1994 onwards. In order to compare like with like, I've used the averages from 1994 to 2008. These are primary figures. Any others, if reliable, must have been derived from these.http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table5.htm gives the accident rates for U.S. Air Carriers Operating Under 14 CFR 121, Scheduled and Nonscheduled Service (Airlines). The average number of miles flown was 6,836,299,600 and the flight hours was 16,470,153 so that the average speed was 415 mph.http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table10.htm gives the comparable figures for US GA. Miles flown is not availablehttp://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx gives comparable figures for US road accidents. Hours travelled are not available.We can convert from miles to hours and vice versa by considing a realistic range of 100 - 300 mph for GA and 20 - 40 mph for road traffic. I've shown these in the following table where numbers in italic are converted..............Average Speed.....Fatal Accidents.....Fatal Accidents...............Assumed............./1M miles......../100,000 hrsAirlines.............................0.00036..........0.01408 Highway..............................0.01350 ...................20..................................0.027...................30..................................0.040...................40..................................0.054 General Aviation......................................1.3560..................100................0.13560 ..................200................0.06780 ..................300................0.04520 The table shows that, for the range of speeds considered, GA fatality rates are higher than for airline or cars. These are rates which reliably compare the risk of travelling 1 mile or 1 hour using the different modes.Another aspect is the "lifetime" risk which takes account of the amount of time/distance covered using the different modes. The Poisson Distribution deals with the statistics of random events, like accidents. It says that the probability of k events occuring based on an accident rate r is:P(k) = (r^k) * e^(-r) / k!The case k = 0 means no event occurrs. In the case of fatality rate this means survival. The equation then reduces to:P(0) = e^(-r)Assuming that we drive for 50 years then the average US driver drives some 673,800 miles in a lifetime. The fatality rate of the driver's lifetime is 673,800*0.01350/1,000,000 = 0.00909. The probability of there not being a fatal accident in that mileage is e^(-0.00909) = 0.9909 or a survival probability of 99.09%To compare with GA, I assume that that a GA pilot flies 50,000 hours in a liftime - based on Geofs's statement that a GA pilot would have to 2- 3 lifetimes to accumulate 1000,000 hours. The fatality rate in the pilot's lifetime is 1.356*50,000/100/100,000 = 0.678. The probability of there not being a fatal accident in that time is e^(-0.678) 0.5076 or a survival probability of 50.76% If the lifetime hours are reduced to 10,000 then the survival probability becomes 87.32%: reducing them to 1,000 hrs increases the survival probability to 98.65%I suspect these findings may not please everyone because they show GA is less safe than highways, but let's try a simple sense check. The road traffic accident rate is 0.01350 fatal accidents/1M miles. That for GA aircraft is 1.356/100,000 flight hours. The GA speed needed to give the same fatal accident rate is 1.356 (GA Fatal acccident rate/100,000 flight hours) / 1.350 ( Highways fatal accident rate/1 M miles) all multiplied by 10 (1 M/100,000). There is no way that thev average speed of GA aircraft is 1000+ mph!I'm more than willing to discuss reasoned arguments - I won't bother with arguments on the lines of "you are wrong". If I am wrong then tell me why.