How safe are we?

[Danb]

Bennett..your story sounds like my biography I bet we're both seniors and can't beat being ultra conservative. Recurrent training should be a requirement not our stupid physical

[John Pleisse]

An instrument rating can reduce your chances of dying in a fatal aircraft accident by nearly 50%.

[rbridges]

An instrument rating can reduce your chances of dying in a fatal aircraft accident by nearly 50%.

 

is that an actual statistic?  I can see how having an instrument rating makes you a much better pilot, but I could also see how it would give you a false sense of security.

 

I think if you have high personal minimums and keep your bird in top flying shape (no cutting corners), flying is a very safe endeavor.  I read the NTSB reports occasionally, and many of them result from poor decisions.

[N201MKTurbo]

Hours on motorcycles are like hours in airplanes. I have continuously owned a street motorcycle sense I was 15. I have had 4 fairly serious motorcycle accidents, in two of them I got injured pretty good. My last motorcycle accident was in 1977, I learned how to ride without killing my self. (knock on wood)

[John Pleisse]

Nall Report quoted on a previous thread. It chronicled the IFR ticket vs. the fatal rate.

[N201MKTurbo]

An instrument rating can reduce your chances of dying in a fatal aircraft accident by nearly 50%.

If it is a fatal accident don't you die?

[tonyk628]

65% of all statistics are true...

If you take the time to manage risk appropriately, GA flying much safer overall.  I don't think its one distinct thing like VFR into IFR, but every situation has its own causal factors.  It is our job as professional airmen to take these lessons and learn from them.  Some of us do better than others at that.  Most of the time it can be mitigated but sometimes the vac pump just goes, or the engine quits not due to fuel starvation.  If you want to completely eliminate risk from your life, don't wake up in the morning, otherwise take a sensable approach to reduce the human element as part of the equation as much as possible, and enjoy life without being a worry wart.

[moodychief]

Fly frequent trips to destinations she has a desire to go to. I only do standard rate turns and wide patterns to keep her comfortable and at ease. One time Memphis Center instructed an immediate 90 degree turn for traffic avoidance. She got upset when I exceeded the standard rate turn because she had never see me "turn that sharp" before and it scared her.

After 7 years of Mooney ownership, my wife now climbs aboard, plugs in the headset, whips out the NOOK and reads until we touch down. She doesn't like steep turns, legs over two hours, turbulence down low, punching through 9,000 feet of clouds. However, she is okay once we reach cruise altitude. I try to minimize the things she doesn't like so it is more enjoyable for her. She has become accustomed to this mode of travel and actually prefers it 99% of the time. We file IFR every flight and she doesn't like hard IFR conditions.

Just last weekend she made me choke on my supper when she made the comment, "We ought to seriously think about going to Oshkosh this year!" It took a while but I think she is almost perfect!

[Earl]

While my wife is not a big fan of GA she knows that I practice conservative risk management decision making and fortunately for me, she is a scientist and understands what I mean.  If you break down all GA accidents you can easily eliminate a lot of risk.  For example, almost every flight I take is on an IFR flight plan.  This eliminates the risk of inadvertent VFR into IMC which is a big contributor to fatal accidents.  A certain percentage of accidents (and an even higher percentage of fatalities) occur at night.  I no longer fly at night (VFR or IFR) and have eliminated that portion of the risk (I obviously do not eliminate the risk of the hours as they happen to occur during the day, just the excess risk from night operation).  I also have other personal minimums that eliminate risk such as no departure from an airport below IFR minimums for the available approaches, leaving at least 1 hour of fuel on board at my intended destination instead of 45 minutes and so on.  When I explained all this to her she recognized the residual risk that remained and is comfortable with it and flies with me regularly.  But again, she is a scientist and can evaluate the situation more rationally.  If you are talking pure emotion there is not much you can do except to let time and experience be the teacher.

[N33GG]

pinerunner:

 

Pay attention to what Dave Marten posted.

 

Until your wife, or anyone else for that matter, feels safe and secure, her brain is effectively shut down and closed.  Logic is not going to work.

 

Flight instructors have to deal with this all the time with some primary, and sometimes advanced students.  Even some people that want to learn to fly and are eager to jump in the cockpit do not feel safe at first.  When that happens, instructors must recognize the issue with comfort and feeling unsafe, and deal with it.  Until a student feels safe, at any level, learning will not take place.  And the answer is not logic and stats.  The answer is as Dave said:  Short flights on nice smooth days, low stress, no destinations that must be met, etc. etc. etc.  Until she feels safe, however long that takes, her brain is not going to respond to anything like stats.  We are dealing with feelings here.

 

Just curious, how many hours and ratings do you have?  You might consider having a flight instructor fly with you and her for a while to help her get comfortable. 

 

Good luck!

[N33GG]

FWIW, nobody wants to admit it, but even advanced students that are generally comfortable and feel safe flying, have areas they in fact do not feel safe with, such as stalls or steep turns, or something else.  When I instruct, I always look for areas students are not comfortable, and try to address it and get them comfortable.  If you have anything in flying that makes you uncomfortable, the odds are you have had a closed mind due to feeling unsafe and have some more learning that needs to take place.  The next BFR or IPC, tell your instructor about any areas you are uncomfortable.  You will be doing yourself and your instructor a big favor, and you will be a better and safer pilot as a result.

 

Again, FWIW.  Good luck!

[M016576]

We drive down dual lane roads at 55 mph everyday, less than 10 feet from a gruesome death and completely reliant on our fellow man. Not so in the air. It is the one place you can mitigate 100% of risk.

I disagree. It may be a big sky, but there are plenty of "our fellow man" out there trying to kill us. You can never mitigate all the risk: flying is inherently dangerous.

[aviatoreb]

 

Looking at accidents that occurred under instrument conditions, we found that the Mooney pilots seem to do a significantly better job. The IMC accident rate per 100,000 hours for the Mooney is just a little over half the accident rate of the other retractables (5.91 versus 10.14). It's even better for instrument-rated Mooney pilots on IFR flight plans, at 1.89 per 100,000 hours versus 4.97 for the comparison group."

 

From this, it appears you can improve your safety by flying on an IFR flight plan.  --Now how that compares to a motorcycle or car, I haven't got a clue.  And do you compare per hour, or per mile. --After all, the risk of death in a car is about zero if your in rush hour traffic 90% of the time and moving at under 20mph.   On the other hand if you spend one hour on your commute each way, you have lost 10% of your waking hours.   And that is a very slow and painful death to me.

 

I read this very article a few years ago.  It is really striking.

 

Now this is a correlation study and not a causation analysis.  There is no way to pull the two concepts apart though.  Are you safer for flying on an IFR flight plan?  Or do people who are generally safer in the way they behave in all aspects of their flying the sorts who generally also file an IFR flight plan?

 

I don't know about you - but I did take this to heart in any case.  It is striking that the IFR flight plan people were performing better than VFR flight people - by a lot.  1.89 vs 7 per thousand.

[aviatoreb]

Ok - here are some of the many many studies I have collected:

 

 

Risks Which Increase Chance of Death by 0.000001 (1 in a million), followed by the cause of death.

 

·      Smoking 1.4 Cigarettes (Cancer, Heart Disease)

·      Drinking ½ liter of wine (Cirrhosis of the liver)

·      Spending 1 hour in a coal mine (Black Lung Disease)

·      Spending 3 hours in a coal mine (Accident)

·      Living 2 days in New York or Boston (Air Pollution)

·      Traveling 6 Minutes by canoe (Accident)

·      Traveling 10 miles by bicycle (Accident)

·      Traveling 300 miles by car (Accident)

·      Flying 1000 miles by jet (Accident)

·      Flying 6000 miles by jet (Cancer caused by cosmic radiation)

·      Living 2 months in Denver (Cancer caused by cosmic radiation)

·      Living 3 months in average brick or stone building (Cancer caused by natural radioactivity)

·      One chest x-ray taken in a good hospital (Cancer caused by radiation)

·      Living 2 months with a cigarette smoker (Cancer, heart disease)

·      Eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter (Liver cancer caused by aflatoxin

·      Drinking Miami drinking water for 1 year (Cancer caused by Chloroform)

·      Drinking 30 12oz cans of diet soda (Cancer caused by saccharin)

·      Living 5 years at the boundary of a typical nuclear power plant in the open (Cancer caused by radiation)

·      Living 20 years near a PVC plant (Cancer caused by vinyl chloride)

·      Living 150 years within 20 miles of a nuclear power plant (Cancer caused by radiation)

·      Eating 100 Charcoal Broiled steaks (Cancer from benzopyrene)

 

 

Adapted from: Wilson, Richard. 1979. “Analyzing the Daily Risks of Life.” Technology Review. V.81, No.4. p. 43.

[N33GG]

aviatoreb:

 

I am in Big Trouble!

[aviatoreb]

jobs
per 100,000

117.8 71.1 69.8 Structural metal workers 58.2 Drivers-sales workers 37.9 Roofers 37.0 Electrical power installers 32.5 Farm occupations 28.0 Construction laborers 27.7 Truck drivers 25.0

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics; survey of occupations with minimum 30 fatalities and 45,000 workers in 2002

The 10 most dangerous Occupation Fatalities Timber cutters Fishers

Pilots and navigators 

 

 

TOP CAUSES OF DEATH

8 Dec 1997 Michael Fumento 1996 data.

Diseases of heart Malignant neoplasms Cerebrovascular diseases Chronic obstructive

pulmonary diseases Accidents and adverse

effects
Pneumonia and influenza Diabetes mellitus
HIV infection
Suicide
Chronic liver disease and

733,834 544,278 160,431 106,146

93,874

 82,579
 61,559
 32,655
 30,862
 25,135

cirrhosis
SOURCE: Monthly Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 46,
no. 1 (S2), "Births and Deaths: United States, 1996."

THEN AND NOW 1900 VS 2000
Newsweek Fall 2001 Health for life Causes of death in US population Percent of all deaths

1900
11.8 Pneumonia
11.3 Tuberculosis
8.3 Diarrhea/enteritis 8.0 Heart disease 

1998

30.3 Heart disease 23.0 Cancer

7.0 Stroke
5.2 Respiratory diseases 4.1 Accidents 

 

 

[aviatoreb]

aviatoreb:

 

I am in Big Trouble!

 

I won't tell.

[aviatoreb]

@@Free Diver

World's top free diver plunges to death trying to set record. ABCNEWS.com 10/17/2002 Diver Dies While She Tries to Break World Record "Free diving is dangerous, and in some cases deadly sport. There are about 5,000 free divers around the world, and an estimated 100 die each year." 

[aviatoreb]

@Fire

z74\clip\2003\10\firecig.txt Philip Morris Pays $2 Million to Burn Victim New York moves closer to implementing fire-safe cigarette law Parts excerpted from the Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2003 CLEBURNE, Texas smoking materials — primarily cigarettes — are also the nation's biggest cause of fatal fires. Smoldering cigarettes account for about one-quarter of U.S. fire fatalities. These fires also cause about 2,000 injuries and hundreds of millions of dollars in property losses each year. 

[aviatoreb]

Lest your friends or wife think you would be safe at home on the couch:

 

 

@@Inactivity

SLOTH IS A DEADLY SIN
z74\clip\2003\10\diet.txt
May 9th 2003
The Economist
Global Agenda
The World Health Organisation (WHO) reckons
that sheer physical inactivity causes the deaths of about 2m people each year. Gluttony is another: rising consumption of fatty foods has combined with increasingly sedentary lifestyles to cause a global epidemic of obesity. In just five years, between 1995 and 2000, the number of clinically obese people ballooned from 200m to 300m, of whom 115m are reckoned to be suffering from weight- related health problems. 

[aviatoreb]

This one is the most relevant since it is in terms of hours of exposure - it is counter to my memory that motorcycles are slightly worse - but you get different exact values between different studies and assumptions on the data collection

 

 

Sources: National Safety Council, National Center for Health Statistics, FBI, Statistical Abstract of the U.S., "Catalog of Risks by B. Cohen and I.S. Lee, "Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention" by D. Schottenfeld and J.F. Fraumeni Jr.

_________________________

Fatalities per million hours

Skydiving = 128.71
General aviation = 15.58
On-road motorcycling = 8.80
Scuba diving = 1.98
Living (all causes of death) = 1.53
Swimming = 1.07
Snowmobiling = 0.88
Passenger cars = 0.47
Water skiing = 0.28
Bicycling = 0.26
Flying (domestic airlines) = 0.15
Hunting = 0.08
Cosmic radiation from transcontinental flights = 0.035
Home living (active) = 0.027
Traveling in a school bus = 0.022
Compiled by Failure Analysis Associates, Inc. (Design News, 10/4/93) ______________________

[aviatoreb]

This one is my favorite statistic.  Some people say that 150 people per year die by a coconut falling on their heads.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_coconut

[laytonl]

If you only fly on beautiful sunny days with little wind and make sure you have plenty of gas and oil, you will be safer then driving an auto. IMHO....

I believe Richard Collins once wrote an article to this effect. His take was that a SE airplane that is well maintained and flown by a competent pilot on a VFR day compares favorably with an automobile. IFR ups the risk some, LIFR ups it more, and night IFR further ups the risk. Buzzing, scud running, running out of gas and other stupid pilot tricks up the risks exorbitantly. Airlines have significantly better safety record and professional crewed airplanes do pretty well too. The article was written over 20 years ago, so I may not have it completely correct. Lee

[dfgreene61]

I had the same problem, I switched wives and now the problem is gone ;0)

[aviatoreb]

Now for a bit of sobering considerations.

 

If you take p=1.5 x 10^(-5) as the death rate per hrs of exposure of flying GA (that is 1.5 per 100,000 hrs) which might sound sort of low - and yes it is much worse than cars, but hey still a small number right?  Yes, it might be lower, perhaps much lower if you are a good/smart/careful pilot who takes less risk than those few yahoo's who are bring down the scary stats for all of us.

 

But for the following, take p=1.5 x 10^(-5), then assume independence (a doubtable assumption but a typical statistical back of the envelope sin, so bear with me..).  Then to live through 100 hrs of flying per year, you need to not die independently 100 times:

 

probability of dying in a year of statistically independent year of flying: 1-(1-p)^100=1-(1-1.5 x 10^(-5))^100=0.0015= 0.15%.  Darn - not so little anymore?

 

Now suppose you plan to fly for 50 years of that - through 5000hrs.  Then 1-(1-p)^5000=1-(1-1.5 x 10^(-5))^5000=0.0723=7.23%.

That means if there are 13 of us here, then 1 of us is a goner in the next 50 years by flying....under these assumptions.

 

Most of us will die by then by some other means within the next 50 years.

 

(Homework problem for the reader - prove that a 50,000 hr pilot has worse than a 50% probability....UNDER these assumptions.  Luckily airline pilots get to use a better p).

 

(Of the many problems with the statistical independence assumption is that you might guess at least that flying more would lower your p.  And that surviving flying longer would select you as not being dead yet - of one of those guys with poor p).