A 172 flys slower, and its gear will absorb more impact, plus you can see where you’re landing. :)
....Agree....! I have numerous hours in both several Cessnas and Cherokees.... much prefer the Cessna series...there is a horrible video on YouTube (the aircraft accident series) that shows a low-wing Cherokee hitting a high-wing Cessna while both were on final to some grass strip somewhere...I believe all passengers in both aircraft were fatalities...
The things that you mention are inaccurate and/or basically meaningless. A Cherokee 140 has a stall speed of 48 knots when the flaps are down and a Cessna 172 has a stall speed of 48 knots when the flaps are down, so which one flies slower? The pilots view of the terrain ahead is approximately the same when coming in for a landing. And the gear sticking down below the fuselage on a high wing aircraft means you are much more likely to turn the the higher centered gravity on its nose when those little tires hit rough terrain.
I suppose that we could go round and round on this type of meaningless argument. Cherokees have approximately the same safety record as Cessna 172s when compared with pilots of similar levels of experience.
“A 172 flys slower, and its gear will absorb more impact, plus you can see where you’re landing. :)”
And they don’t float so far.
As far as accidents... Cherokees will go into a “mush mode” if you try to get them off in challenging conditions before they reach flying speed. They will mush along in ground effect in a nose high attitude without gaining speed until you hit something solid, but this is often a walk away from your broken airplane situation.
172s on the other hand will try to obey your command and claw away from the ground barely above stall and gain altitude until the pilot tries to get just a little more altitude before the plane is ready and then the plane will nose straight in which is not a survivable situation.
We have had both types of “accidents” on the feild where we live. The Cherokee’s wings were torn off when it mushed into the trees and everyone in the overloaded plane walked away. The pilots of the two most recent departure stall “accidents” nosed straight into the ground and did not survive. The Cherokee pilot was a newbie, the departure stall pilots were both flying homebuilts were high time and suffered engine power loss on departure.