From Charles Kluepfel Bloomfield
Andrew Weir claims that the most appropriate comparison of air safety to car
safety is on a per-trip basis
(7 August, p 42).
While he could have a point that
most air fatalities occur near takeoffs and landings, of which there are one
each per flight, car accidents are nowhere near as concentrated on parking the
car. A thousand-mile car trip is quite likely a thousand times as dangerous as a
one-mile car trip, even if the same is not true for the corresponding air
trips.
In a real-life situation, someone contemplating the mode of travel to use in
going from New York City to Chicago would be ill advised to base their choice
solely on the fact that the average airline trip is 12 times as dangerous as the
average automobile trip, considering the considerably shorter length of the
average automobile trip.
While a per-mile basis might be biased against auto travel, a per-trip basis
is biased against air travel.
New Jersey
