O.K. gang, I am becoming a victim of my own circular arguments that are detrimental to any real value here.
I will now bow out of my own thread and leave it up to the rest of you to hash it out.
In closing it would seem to be reasonable to expect that technology in aircraft design and flying aids would bring down the fatal accident rate.
Looking back on my own exposure to airplanes the modern jets are far superior to the DC3 era, therefore one would expect a lower accident rate.
Conversely the industry still relies on a high number of new low time pilots as instructors and it is unlikely the curve of competence would go upwards as time goes by, because they can not really teach something they don't know.