Statistics help people make rational decisions, despite irrational knee jerk desire to respond to distorted impression of risk. Micromorts are a clear way to convey rationality to people who are challenged otherwise.
No, the big problem with statistics and probability is that they tell you how often something
might happen not
when it will happen - that is why you can have 1000's of flying hours with no fatals and then 2 on the same day.
It doesn't make for good safety planning, especially in terms of customer expectation, it just gives the bean counters a means to quantify the cost of a life.
Yes, CFIT is a bigger killer than engine failure but the corrections to the 2 issues should run in parallel, not in competition.
Hughes - you are absolutely right, skill-fade due to automation-reliance is very real in the FW world and is spreading into the RW world. I'm an old-fashioned boy (perhaps dinosaur) and rather believe if you have a pilot in the cockpit, he should be capable of flying the aircraft really well.