IO wrote:
Personally I feel safer flying 200 miles than driving the same distance on a crowded motorway, with a lot of people zigzagging while on the phone But I would not say the same if I was in a 1970 C150... I also used to ride motorbikes a lot but would not do so today.
I wish I could say the same but am afraid that looking at the accident statistics by those involved in accident investigation must be akin to me talking to my teenagers.
The same (sometimes stupid) mistakes are made over and over again and some argue that this is in part due to the personality make up that most of us that fly are made of.
I was recently in Oklahoma and visited the FAA and looking at their stats was pretty im- or depressive.
Whilst the accident rates declined a lot over the first half of the last century due to the fact that we learned more about making aeroplanes more reliable and safer to operate, the curve is now a plateau as it seems impossible to make those that handle the controls better at avoiding accidents.
We comfort ourselves (at least I do) by reading the reports and thinking that we would never do anything as reported upon, but I think that if we look a bit closer at our own performance that we can all write a couple of 'I learned about flying from that columns' and have no doubt that those who have come to grief in accidents did the same.
Just be careful out there.
FD