2017 was an exceptional safe year mainly due to a few lucky escapes .So everybody knew 2018 was most probably going to be worse.
One has to look as the tendency over the years and indeed we are on the good side of it , especially considering the traffic growth in the last years
The stats that make headlines are mostly those with loss of life, the narrow escapes and/or the pure luck ones are not counted , But to continue to improve safety , that is those we should be looking at closely ( and we do) as well as those saved by exceptional airmanship ( that we do not really do yet ) . Lots to lean from those l , but in all honesty everyone is trying hard to make it as safe as possible. Most of the cowboy outfits of the past are long gone...