Flying is safer than driving on the highway.
How'd you come up with that brilliant conclusion...less women drivers? {snark}...
Not true. The only acceptable method to compare risk between air travel and automobile travel is based on the number of deaths per hour of exposure.
Data from a respected safety analyst, Trevor Kletz, show that air travel has a fatal-accident frequency rate four times higher than that for driving a car. For airplane travel there are approximately 2.4 deaths per million hours of exposure; for travel by car the figure is 0.6 deaths per million hours of exposure.
Simply put, for the same number of hours riding in a car or riding in an airplane, you are four times more likely to be killed in an airplane than in a car.
-- JOHN M. HOFFMANN President Safety Engineering Labs Inc. Detroit, Nov. 22, 1994
Statistically that is the case if you figure it on a per-hour basis. When you figure it on a per-trip basis, car, train and bus come out safer than the airplane.
Driving: 1.1 fatalities per fatal accident
General Aviation: 1.7 fatalities per fatal accident
Airlines: 31 fatalities per fatal accident
Not if you’re flying off the rim of a canyon, it’s not.