Year on year GA fatalities stats
 

32700 car fatalities in 2013, USA
1700, UK

Well yes, but if there were 30 million pilots rather than 40,000 of whom many are predominantly flying big safe jets, and if all of us could fly as much as we drive, there would be rather more than 1700 GA deaths in the UK, wouldn't there.

Not disputing that.
A lot of folk die in road accidents but very few in GA aircraft accidents.
The US population is 6 times that of the UK, if we followed the population alone that would suggest they should have 10200 or so road fatalities a year but it is 3 times that. Its interesting what statistics through up but we may not be comparing like with like.

I know many pilots personally that have been killed in GA accidents but I dont know anyone personally who has been killed in a car accident

Maybe they don't worry too much about driving safely given that the chances of being shot are several times the chances of dying on the road, so driving vastly more safely doesn't extend their life expectancy by all that much.

Or maybe they average about twice the mileage that we do.

My thought was that they are not particularly good drivers but it could be European cars are much more crash-worthy than US ones. The build quality of US cars often leaves a lot to be desired.
I was talking to a fireman recently and he said it has become much more difficult in recent years to rescue an accident victim because of the protective cage built into a modern car.

A bit of thread drift...

Modern cars are much easier to cut into, as that is now intended - it did not used to be. I have been a firefighter for 25 years, and I have cut open a lot of cars, and a few planes in my years. Modern cars are a "cage" design, but when you know how, thery're easy to get into with the proper tools. With a helper, I can have four doors right off, and the roof off in around five minutes. A dash roll up can take a little longer...

As you pry and cut into a modern car, it will crumple predictably, and you can take advantage of this, to get access as you need it to simply cut away the parts you want gone.

The worst car I ever had to cut open was a '58 Chevy, it was built like a fortress, with door skins so thick, that they would not yield, to allow the access required to remove the door.

Airplanes are very different to cut into, but not really any more difficult, once you understand their structures.

For myself, for the last few years, my personal transport has been about evenly split between flying and driving - I do equal amounts of each on a weekly basis. I feel safer in the air, though it's a reality that if there were as many planes in my airspace, as there are cars on the road, there would be no hope of the safety we now enjoy up there....

It will always be an "apples to oranges" comparison, but anything which gets us thinking about aviation safety is always good!

I will say up front that I've never had the pleasure of visiting GB, but I suspect it has more to do with the speeds involved. 45-50 mph is common speed limit on city boulevards, (which are commonly exceeded by 10 mph) Speed limit on a section of Highway 130, not far away, is 85 mph. Just recently had most of a family killed there in a roll-over. Another local accident recently had a Nissan Altima crash *through*, not over, a concrete barrier, then flew some 100' through the air to come to rest against a shopping center electrical vault. Needed a forensic team to determine the remains were of an Altima. 4 dead.

Some time ago, a local policeman told me his department averages at least one citation per day for speed in excess of 100mph.

We seem to have a trend in the UK of driving slower and observing speed limits, possibly due to the high level of surveillance.

When I was younger no-one worried about speed limits, I certainly never went as slow as 30mph in a built up area and motorways were for speeds of around 90mph.

Nowadays everyone just potters along, including me. Less fun driving but I assume a lot safer.

In the UK I think its actually the cost of fuel that has slowed people down on the motorway.

I've always been relatively well behaved around town in 30 limits because I don't want a dozy pedestrian's death on my conscience. I think motorists these days are perhaps better educated by safety campaigns and more fearful of enforcement.

However I do go fast on deserted B roads where the road ahead is well sighted when the mood takes me. You've got to have some fun at some point, haven't you?

FF
(clean license)

I think that traffic and roadworks have a large part to play as well.

End of August bank holiday - London to South Devon - 160 miles in 6 hours - average speed less than 30! On roads where, if the speed limit had been followed, the average speed would have been closer to 60.

Last weekend - London to Manchester - close to 200 miles in 4 and a half hours. All of it on motorways where you might think you could do a steady 70... Sunday return would have been a nightmare if I had stayed on the motorway but ended up taking the same time along the A5...

:mad:

B.

I drive around a bit for work. My car has one of those averager things on it. I've just had a look at it and over the last 822 miles I've averaged 38mph. I tend to drive briskly as well. I may as well just drive at 38 mph. It took my wife 30 minutes to drive 1.7 miles from the local school to our house today and no she wasn't on a school run.

I'm in the same boat as Pull What, I know more people that have been killed flying in the UK than in car accidents. In fact I don't know anyone that's been killed in a car accident, unless you stretch the level of association to silly extents.

I certainly know more people who were killed in road accidents than flying, and that's pretty much what one would expect isn't it?

I don't know if it is. I'm not a statistician but the pool of flyers that you know will be a lot smaller than the pool of drivers and being as flying is intrinsically more dangerous than driving (I'm talking about GA flying) if you take deaths per participant then I guess in theory you should know more dead pilots. I certainly do. I could be totally wrong in my assumptions though.

The interesting question would be how many pilots are killed in car crashes.

I think it's roughly 12 a year - 1 a month - in the UK. Varies but not far off.

This year from memory - 2 near Popham, 2 in the Highlands, 2 near Dundee, 2 air show.

It's September now ...

Regarding traffic speeds, when I was a UAS student in the early 1970s, I certainly used to drive my MG Midget across London without any regard for any speed limits....:=

With a Peco 'big twin' exhaust, changing down to second and clogging it through the Picadilly underpass was excellent fun!

But times have certainly changed now - I wouldn't dream of driving in Central London these days.

Beagle, my father always claimed that a Peco exhaust was nothing more than two pipes welded on to a single pipe and did nothing for performance except make a noise. He would fit a twin through system enhancing performance, and pooh poohed the Peco.

I think it's easy to look and point at the aircraft, but it's also worth looking at the quality of the pilot and the experience/confidence they possess. There's a fine line (in my limited experience) between having no confidence and being a danger and having lots of confidence and being just as big a danger. We all know that one of the biggest reasons for an accident is the squishy bag of blood and bones in the front...


Having said that, I'm not sure I would fully trust an organisations figures when they can't spell "flight"...


"Fligt attendant injured during takeoff"