7 ms·
Forgive me, but by what possible metric: miles traveled in it?
by coddingtonbear 11mo ago
Forgive me, but by what possible metric: miles traveled in it?
- dmd 11mo agoGiven an hour spent flying in a commercial US-flagged airliner or an hour spent in your living room, and you're (far) more likely to get hurt or die in your living room.
- watwut 11mo agoIs that actual statistic?
- rogerrogerr 11mo agoAirliners are hilariously safe. One of my favorite stats is that it’s the second safest form of transportation per passenger mile (elevators win).
- ferguess_k 11mo agoHow about per fly versus per drive? This weeds out two issues: - Most people don't fly often enough to justify Statistics significance (I for one only flied maybe less than 10 flights in my whole life) - One flight is going to cover a huge amount of mileage anyway Edit: Just realized that issue 1 is not an issue, we are going to do an average here anyway, so not individual.
- watwut 11mo agoLiving rooms are also hilariously safe. And we spend a lot of time in them. Is there actual reason to think they are less safe per hour of time being spend in them as OP claimed?
- anonymars 11mo agoStairs?
- rogerrogerr 11mo agoSpouses
- kccqzy 11mo agoPer passenger mile is arguably not the best denominator. People choose planes because they are going long distances. Consider whether a better denominator would be per passenger trips. A 10,000 mi trip halfway across the world could have the same weight as a 2 mi trip to the grocery store. Or per hour travelled. By these metrics commercial flying isn't as safe as you think.
- rogerrogerr 11mo agoIf I’m going somewhere in the continental US, my choices are to fly or drive. I’ll be traveling the same number of miles either way, so the relevant comparison is indeed per mile.
- kccqzy 11mo agoThat doesn't explain anything. Specifically it doesn't explain why in our comparisons the destination is fixed. You could decide for this weekend trip we're going to budget a max of 3 hours on transportation. Should we take a three hour flight to a different state or should we drive for three hours to a closer destination?
- rogerrogerr 11mo agoThis just isn’t how normal people behave. They are starting with a destination (relatives, national park, etc.) and then choosing how to get there.
- kccqzy 11mo agoThat's not how normal people behave. If people choose a faraway destination first they are implicitly assuming they will fly there.
- noir_lord 11mo agoexcept 10,000 miles by anything but air isn't a single trip, it'd be multiple trips and involve a boat so that's not really a fair comparison either. Furthest you can go in a straight land on land is about 7000 miles :).
- IAmBroom 11mo agorogerrogerr, I suspect that stat involves all deaths, not just to passengers. The vast majority of deaths by train involve "trespassers", which is code for "dimwits who bypassed crossing gates and got smashed by the train that couldn't stop". Usually not even the train drivers are injured, much less the passengers. But airplanes are very safe - perhaps mostly because it's hard for idiots to drive in front of them.
- AnimalMuppet 11mo agoTwo nits: First, you are correct about trespassers. But even if you only consider passengers, planes are still safer per passenger-mile than trains. Second, commercial planes are very safe. Private planes... not in the same league.
- watwut 11mo agoYeah, but so are living rooms. And even when someone dies in the living room, it is most likely to be a hearth attack or other heath issue unrelated to the place.
- potato3732842 11mo ago> which is code for "dimwits who bypassed crossing gates and got smashed by the train that couldn't stop". It's code for suicide. The remainder are as you described.
- uyzstvqs 11mo agoActual statistics: In 2023 there were 35.3 million commercial flights worldwide.[1] In that year, there were 66 accidents in commercial aviation worldwide, of which one fatal (9N-ANC).[2] This means that the chance of being in an accident was approx 1:535,000 (0.000187 %). The chance of getting into a fatal accident was 1:35,300,000 (0.000003 %). Per passenger the chance of fatality was approx 1:61,111,111 (0.00000164 %), with 72 fatalities among 4,400,000,000 total passengers. In contrast, the United States saw 125,700 preventable deaths in the home in 2023.[3] The country had a population of 336,806,231 people back then.[4] This means a probability of approx 1:2,679 (0.037 %). [1] ATAG Aviation Beyond Borders 2024 [2] ICAO Safety Report 2024 Edition [3] National Safety Council (NSC) Injury Facts [4] World Bank
- dboreham 11mo agoSomething...something...and statistics.
- rob74 11mo ago[citation needed] All things being equal, I would assume that you are safer in an environment that's stationary and reasonably sturdy, rather than in an aluminum tube at 40,000 ft above ground? Ok, as they say, all things are rarely equal, of course people are more likely to die of old age or of various diseases at home rather than while traveling (simply because old and terminally ill people probably don't travel that much), but I would say that skews the statistics against the living room and should be discounted. And at home you can engage in various activities that you probably won't do while on an airplane (electrical repairs, cooking...), but if you get hurt while doing that, that's also not a fault of the living room per se...
- dmd 11mo agoThat's just it though. You're safer strapped into a seat, doing nothing, than you are doing whatever it is you do at home. Would you be safer in your living room doing nothing, strapped to a seat, never doing anything remotely hazardous (like walking around), vs the same in a tube in the sky? Yes, of course. But that's not what people actually DO in their living rooms!
- metadat 11mo agoHigher risk of developing blood clots while sitting immobilized at altitude in an airplane seat. Contributing factors: - Prolonged immobility, which causes blood to pool in the legs - Low cabin pressure and dehydration from the dry cabin air
- someuser2345 11mo agoThere's probably a selection bias here; if you're sick, you are far more likely to be inside your living room than on an airplane.
- tshaddox 11mo agoMy guess would be that a lot of living room deaths are due to illness which would make the person unlikely to board a commercial flight, or other categories which certain individuals could reasonably exclude themselves from (drug overdose, suicide, amateur electrician work, etc.). I doubt there's a good source of data, but I'd be very curious what the odds of dying in your living room per hour are if you exclude those categories and look at things like house fires, natural disasters, homicide, freak accidents (like planes falling on your house), etc.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- flobosg 11mo ago> by what possible metric Micromorts, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
- rogerrogerr 11mo agoThe relevant bits here - deaths from all causes in the US are 22 micromorts per day. Lower in the article, airline travel is listed as 1 micromort per 1000 miles travelled. Background risk of death from non-natural causes are listed as 1.6 per day; many of those non-natural causes do not exist in an airplane cabin (e.g. you probably aren't going to be murdered because no one has anything more effective than a plastic spork, you probably aren't going to kill yourself, you probably won't be hit by a car). So it seems reasonable to say that being inside an airliner cabin is safer than being outside of one. Also, this is probably confounded by many super-old or super-sick people not choosing to fly - if you are in an airliner, you are probably healthier than the average person.
- tshaddox 11mo ago> e.g. you probably aren't going to be murdered because no one has anything more effective than a plastic spork Except for the occasional murder who has access to the flight controls.
- rogerrogerr 11mo ago“Occasional” implies a rate at least several orders of magnitude higher than actual.
- JCharante 11mo agoif it happens once a decade occasional sounds right
- rogerrogerr 11mo agoSo far this year alone, there have been 31,000,000 flights. https://www.airportia.com/flights-monitor/ https://www.airportia.com/flights-monitor/. So somewhere around 300,000,000 flights per decade. If someone said an event happens “occasionally”, I would expect it to be significantly more frequent than 1/300,000,000. Powerball lottery odds are 1 in 292 million. I wouldn’t say that I “occasionally” win the lottery when I buy a ticket!
- SpicyUme 11mo agoOnce you've traveled even a significant fraction of a mile in your living room I'm afraid you're likely dead or seriously injured.