"It should be obvious why driving speed is not needed here."But in a car, isn't a crash at 20mph less likely to be fatal than one at 80 mph?Bob

But in a car, isn't a crash at 20mph less likely to be fatal than one at 80 mph?

Are you going to drive 20 MPH between SF and NYC? And how much would it increase your time on the road and increase chance that some idiot would run into you and kill you? This is not level of granularity that you can account for.Highway statistics are based on average driving, averaged over millions of drivers who drove billions of miles. Lets not get into ridiculousness.

OK, I understand. Though I have been behind some very slow drivers.Yet, the stats seem to make a lot of assumptions. You have mentioned two, so far. Not sure how accurate they can be. Do they have a percent whitin which they are accurate?Bob

The quality of the statistics is directly correlated to the quality of raw data. How did they arrive at mileage driven, hours flown, how large was the sampled data, etc. I would expect the highway data to be a bit better, the sampling is also huge. I recall that Richard Collins of FLYING who spent a great deal of his life studying GA accidents and related statistics always complained that it is a lot harder in the world of GA to have a good grip on hours flown and becomes even harder if you want to discriminate say jets from turboprops or pistons or bring even more variables like pilot training and level of certification. You do the best you can. I don't recall ever seeing published an error associated with the final statistics.Commenting yet more on your "20 mph" I would imagine it would be a very "unsafe" speed. There will simply be too much difference between you and everybody else on the road - a sure recipe for disaster, specially at night. You don't want to be the fastest car on the road but neither you want to be so slow as to be a moving obstacle for everybody else.

OK, I understand. Though I have been behind some very slow drivers.Yet, the stats seem to make a lot of assumptions. You have mentioned two, so far. Not sure how accurate they can be. Do they have a percent whitin which they are accurate?Bob

Let's be realistic here! The statistics record the number actual fatal accidints and the number of real people who have died in for both GA and car. They take into account all the factors that have been mentioned. They record what has actually happened.GA flight hours are use recorded by by pilots, operators and owners. Car miles are estimated by the government from a number of sources. These can include surveys, traffic counts, etc etc. There is a great deal of experience in making reliable and accurate estmates.Anyway, a simple sense-check shows that to make the GA and car probabilities the same for the New York-Los Angeles trip, the estimated annual car mileage would have to be wrong by a factor of more than 6. A few percent inaccuracy perhaps not not that amount surely?

Hello(!),Just to say a quick merci for the replies etc.. To fill you in on my flying I'm on holiday at the moment and took a tourist flight in a Piper Cadet aircraft which was still a little scary but I was probably 50 percent better. I think knowing that although I might be freaking out a little up there the plane is very happy in the air helped a bit. Also knowing that I'm never going to slow down during the flight helped a little too (I fear mainly falling from a great height and am not too bothered with gliding down to my death so much!). I have a flight with British Airways this evening and am a little nervous but not too bad. Again knowing that the flight will never slow down helps a little.Hopefully I'll keep getting better up there. Would be awesome to enjoy flying as relaxed as I enjoy flightsim (only the scenery is much better and the FPS are super smooth!).Many thanks,Pierre.

I personally think its better to see what the reasons are behind most GA accidents, than show statistics which have errors, and basically tell you nothing about how to keep flight safer. I also think that airplanes are much safer than cars, and it is much harder to get a pilots license than a drivers license. Someone has to be responsible and committed to get their PPL and other ratings, and it takes a lot more reading and learning than driving a car. Heck, if I wanted to, I could get my drivers license right now (I know that would scare some ppl because of my age :().

Hello(!),Just to say a quick merci for the replies etc.. To fill you in on my flying I'm on holiday at the moment and took a tourist flight in a Piper Cadet aircraft which was still a little scary but I was probably 50 percent better. I think knowing that although I might be freaking out a little up there the plane is very happy in the air helped a bit. Also knowing that I'm never going to slow down during the flight helped a little too (I fear mainly falling from a great height and am not too bothered with gliding down to my death so much!). I have a flight with British Airways this evening and am a little nervous but not too bad. Again knowing that the flight will never slow down helps a little.Hopefully I'll keep getting better up there. Would be awesome to enjoy flying as relaxed as I enjoy flightsim (only the scenery is much better and the FPS are super smooth!).Many thanks,Pierre.

sounds like you're gonna love stall practice :( Just remember, to actually just fall out of the sky with no ability to glide would require something drastic to happen to your wings. If you want to look at the stats on how often that happens, go for it. But i'll tell you this: Its so uncommon, the thought shouldn't even cross your mind.As for stalls: You are taught how to recover from them, and it becomes second nature to recover from them. On top of that, you're trained how to avoid entering a stall (it's pretty easy to keep out of stalls imho).So in reality, your fear of just dropping out of the sky like a rock is pretty pointless ;) Just go up there and enjoy flying!Also, ask your instructor to teach you stalls sooner rather than later, that may help you overcome your fear a little faster. Myself, well, I've always loved stall practice, never had a fear of it. I'm one of those guys that cant wait for spin training lol. Perhaps after a little practice you'll be like that ;)Again, like i said in my previous post: Your safety is in your hands. Follow the rules and know your aircraft, and you'll be good to go ;)EDIT: all this stat talk is good, but, either driving or flying, you're pretty dam safe, no matter how you interpret the stats. If you like to fly, you'll take the very very small risk to do so, just as people who have to drive take that very very small risk to do so.

Someone has to be responsible and committed to get their PPL and other ratings,

Responsible .. sure, tell it to pilots or their passengers that kill 1-2 people every day in the US in GA accidents. Or perhaps grab some solid book on the subject - like Aftermath that should open your eyes a bit. But being below 20 you are entitled to certain degree of naivete.

It's the most popular GA aircraft ever made,of course it's safe! Flown in the right hands of course!!