At the risk of beginning to sound like an MD-11 "apologist" as opposed to a simple driver
...The Newark and Memphis accidents were entirely preventable. The outcome (complete hull loss) was tangentially related to
exceedence of lower (but
not unreasonable nor flawed) design loads.
As to statistics, Mark Twain once wrote, "There are three kinds of Lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." A once
huge fleet of DC-10s (now mostly retired, along with nearly every L1011 and 747-100) and a sizeable modern fleet of MD-11 with zillions (that's a scientific term
!) cycles, the record is still a speck, statistically speaking (and the two mentioned above that I've thoroughly studied were entirely preventable). Is it more than, say, a B767? Yes, it is.
Lastly, C172's crash every week, C310's nearly every month. Is it the airplane? No. It's the
training.