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Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics 7/15/2013 4:30:34 AM
Gravity ain't just a good idea, it's the law Airplanes crash. It’s true. As they say in the trade, gravity ain’t just a good idea, it’s the law. In my forty year career in the cockpit of various helicopters, I was always aware of the possibilities, the simple reality that while cruising above the earth’s surface, like all my colleagues in aviation, I was out of my natural element. Regardless how well I understood the risk, how proficient I was at moving the sticks around or how well I knew the flight regulations, none of that knowledge or competence erased simple physics.
But I also understood better than those who don’t fly, that aviation, instead of being a ‘dangerous’ endeavor, is most often safer than traveling in a ground vehicle, especially in a passenger car. In the air I was surrounded (mostly) by professional pilots, always in direct communication with them, often tracked by an FAA radar site with attendant flight following if I wished to use it. Chances were very good that my flying cohorts were sober, cautious, eminently qualified to be operating their machines and (again, mostly) wide awake. We hear the usual horror stories about aviation accidents, inexplicable crashes, dead passengers and twisted metal when something goes horribly wrong in the air, and some people jump to the conclusion that ‘flying is deadly,’ and best avoided. Then those same individuals jump into their motor vehicle, disregard the seat belts, shake off the effects of their three, or six, or nine beers, turn the key and drive home–often too fast– three feet away from other vehicles traveling the opposite direction, some equally impaired. I once flew a young woman to the hospital who had a medical problem requiring a higher level of care than her small hospital could provide. The woman was terrified to fly. The trip was forty minutes by helicopter, and her knuckles were white the entire time. Shortly after I lifted off and pointed the nose toward home she signaled for my flight nurse’s attention and yelled in his headset. “Lower! Lower!” The nurse keyed his mike and relayed her message. She wanted me to fly lower, because “…she’s afraid of heights,” he said. Always mindful of my patient/passengers’ fears and sensibilities, however irrational, I dropped from fifteen-hundred feet down to five hundred. It made sense to her, and she relaxed, somewhat, for the duration of the flight. The numbers didn’t add up to me; but they did to her.
Speaking of irrational numbers, statistics can be used for anything, as Mr. Twain so wonderfully put it, even as the apotheosis of lying. But a look at hard accident data of flying in the recent past, Asiana 214 at SFO notwithstanding, and the record is pretty impressive. Indeed, considering the number of survivors from the accident, Asiana 214 was a pretty impressive crash all by itself, if that can be said. The fact that 304 of 307 passengers & crew left the plane alive speaks volumes about current engineering and crash survivability of modern aircraft.
But what do the numbers say? How many airplane crashes are there, anyway? It depends, of course, on what kind of flying we’re talking about. In the airline industry, which is 99% of the traveling public’s exposure to aviation, the accident rate over the past ten years has been remarkably low. If you book a flight today on any scheduled American commercial carrier, your odds of dying in a crash are 1 in 4.7 million. Traveling on a non-scheduled, or commuter carrier: 1 in 1.8 million. Odds of being hit by lightning are higher at around 1 in 300,000. Going by car instead? In 2012 there were 34,080 highway accident fatalities in the U.S. It may be apples & oranges, or damned lies, as Mr. Twain said, but regardless, that translates to an airplane crash with 300 fatalities every 3.5 days.
So if you’re traveling beyond 500 miles this summer, leave the car in the garage and fly instead. It’s a whole lot safer, no matter how high you go.
