Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!lll-winken!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: srg@quick.com (Spencer Garrett) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Divestiture, Business and the General Public Message-ID: Date: 23 Aug 89 03:59:30 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: Quicksilver Engineering, Seattle Lines: 29 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 320, message 7 of 10 In article , stiatl!john@gatech.edu (John DeArmond) writes: > And as anyone who has looked below the surface of this subject knows, > "deaths per passenger mile" is a completely bogus measurment which > does not represent the true safety condition of modern air travel. As > a larger and larger proportion of a carrier's fleet becomes high capacity > jumbo-jets, the DPPM magically goes down even while the crash rate is up. > > A much truer representation is "deaths per VEHICLE mile". Even more > representative than that would be "crash rate" in units of "crashes per > vehicle mile". Rearrange the figures to fit into either of these models > and the figures don't look so hot. Makes pedaling a bicycle on I-75 at > rush hour look safe. Just a minute, guy. Deaths per passenger mile is exactly the figure you need to calculate your own chance of dying. How many others meet their end at the same time isn't very relevant. Deaths per vehicle mile just makes bigger planes look less safe, ignoring the fact that fewer trips need to be made to accomplish the same end. DPPM does NOT go down "magically" as planes get bigger, we just don't have to send the coroners to as many places to pick up the same number of bodies. Crashes per vehicle mile is a useful figure for gauging the effectiveness of traffic control procedures, since the size of the plane doesn't affect the way it's handled, but for overall air safety concerns I want to know how many *people* bought the farm, not just how many *pilots*. (And I'm not down on pilots, mind you; everyone in my family *is* one!) (And what is this doing in comp.dcom.telecom? I've redirected followups.)