Thanks for the stats 007
Cirrus Past 36 months: 1.54
Cirrus Past 12 months: 1.76
Cirrus Lifetime of the fleet: 1.53
GA fleet single-engine fixed: 1.86
GA fleet all : 1.19
Considering
1) a lot of Cirrus spend a lot of time on missions which are undertaken by relatively few of the other single-engine piston types (e.g. most recent Cirrus fatal hypoxia at FL250),
2) and massively successful new GA types (e.g. R22) have a safety stat 'bulge' thought to be due to the high numbers of pilots with low time on type/mission. (approaching Cirrus #5000),
I'd have to say I wonder what (overall) the Cirrus pilots might be doing right?
Perhaps it is, with COPA encourgement, partly to do with emulating the best practices of corporate and twin pilots that bring the overall GA stats down from 1.86 to 1.19, e.g. recurrent and simulator training, plus terrain warning and in-cockpit-weather? These things are what has made airline flying so much safer.
Short of 'two crew' these practices (not an aircraft "type") show the way to an improved GA safety record of the future. Cirrus would appear to be leading single-engine piston fleet into that territory.
If either of this weeks fatal accidents in France (SportCruiser) and Netherlands (PC12) had been a Cirrus we know what sort of long threads and Cirrus / BRS bashing would have been going on.
Perhaps perversely that is because safety expectations have been set so high of the type. Those might be met when matched by knowledge, skill and judgement of the weakest link, regardless of type - "the nut behind the wheel".