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How safe is air travel ? What is the real risk? Everyone has these thoughts once and a while, and some people are thinking about it constantly. According to the statistics, 90% off all accidents occur within the 10 minutes after takeoff or before landing. So for every flight there are 20 minutes which are, according to the statistics, more dangerous than the other minutes of the flight. To give you an example, calculated from the statistics : If you get into an airplane every day it would take you 26000 years before you would be killed in a crash. Another example: In all the years that I have lived, I don't know anybody personally who got killed in a plane crash. But it takes at least two or three hands to count all the people I've known who've died in car crashes! What's the best thing you can do while flying? Always have your seatbelt fastened, try to sit close to an emergency door and always read the emergency information in the pocket in front of you. It doesn't matter how often you fly, according to information from the survivors of crashes : the person who read the information before take off had 40% higher survival rate than people who didn't. But let's be realistic here! Air travel may be statistically safer, but that's like saying dog mouths statistically have less bacteria than people mouths -- so you'll be a happier, safer person if you only ever kiss your dog! Iit's the psychological trauma of it all that makes the difference. With air travel, the psychological stress of having a plane potentially disintergrate in a very large, very orange and very hot fireball while you're sitting in it, more than helps to cancel out the statistics. It's not the chance of crashing that people are afraid of, but the absolute, sheer terror of being there when it happens. When you goof and kill yourself in your car going down the freeway at 110 miles an hour, it's over before you can say, "I didn't know this was a moose crossing". You crash, things explode instantaneously, you die. Quick and simple. But when you're in a plane and the pilot goofs and kills you, along with the five hundred other poor saps you're with, it doesn't happen right away. The plane is 5 miles in the air. A long time passes in between the point at which you realize you're a goner and the point at which you actually become a goner. It's more like, the wings fall off, you spin helplessly for three whole minutes straight down in sheer, abject terror, and then things explode and you die. In the end, it's obvious which is preferable. |