Dumbass Sayings: “Flying Is Statistically Safer Than Driving”

If you're in a vehicle where a flock
of geese can kill you, that's not safe.

Whenever you’re freaking out on an airplane while it’s getting ready to take off people love to tell you “Ya know, statistically speaking, flying is WAY safer than driving.” Okay… That really doesn’t help me. All you’re doing is saying driving must be the most dangerous thing in the world then. Except, driving is much different than flying. When you’re driving, you’re in control of your own little car. If a cement truck comes out of nowhere you can at least attempt to dodge it. Having control over your own safety is a BIG DEAL. Plus, there’s the whole going 400 MPH slower and being on the ground thing. Flying is much scarier because you’re trusting your life to some people who may or may not be drunk or have mysterious plans to divert off course on a whim and disappear into the ocean.

If you’re going to compare flying to driving you have to compare it to being in a bus. Now, bus crashes happen all the time and lots of people die in those, but buses just seem safer. You’re basically in a giant tank that’s on ground level. There’s a reason John Madden chooses a bus over flying and hasn’t died in a fiery wreck yet. Driving just feels safer because there’s something inherently unnatural about being propelled through the heavens in a rocket. Cars on the other hand are basically just like motorized dual bicycles with a steel shell around it. To me, that seems a lot safer than being in an aluminum missile.

Is Right Now The Most Dangerous Time To Fly in an Airplane?

According to the Aviation Safety Network, it's been four years since the last deadly commercial airliner crash in the U.S. A lot of people see this as great news and in most ways it is, but airline disasters are always going to happen. As long as plane crashes are a statistical reality then the longer you go without one means the odds have to start catching up eventually. That would make it even more dangerous to be flying on a plane these days despite the fact that statistically it's been the safest.

It's like the odds of dying in regular life rise as you get older. You can be in the best shape of your life at 80, that doesn't mean the odds won't catch up to you as time wears on. If you've crossed the same dangerous street a hundred thousand times before without incident, eventually you're going to hit the bingo and get run over. The odds of dying in a plane crash are now 1 in 45 million. An M.I.T. Professor has said you could fly every single day for 123,000 years without being in a fatal crash. I think odds can be a little misleading sometimes. The odds of being struck by lightning once in a year is approximately 1,000,000 to 1, but I'm sure those odds go up if you're running around in electrical storms all the time with tin foil stuffed in your mouth and a metal rod sticking out of your ass. The thing is, you don't know for sure whether the flight you're stepping onto has a metal rod up it's ass or not. That's all I'm saying. Anyways, happy flying!