Joel N. Weber II
Engineer
There are statistics readily available for the number of deaths per billion train and airplane passenger miles.
Something I'm curious about is whether I can directly to determine whether I would be safer traveling 1000 miles on Amtrak or 1000 miles on an airplane by looking at those statistics.
My question is, when a 747 lands on someone's home and kills them, or a P42 strikes an automobile stopped in a grade crossing and an occupant of that automobile dies more or less instantly, is that counted as a death against the travel statistics? (I get the impression the latter is a lot more common than the former, even if we substitute the generic ``passenger airplane'' and ``passenger locomotive''.)
If so, does looking at passenger rail safety statistics leave one with the impression that buying an Amtrak ticket and boarding the train is dramatically less safe than it actually is if the automobile passenger deaths are mixed in with the train passenger deaths?
Something I'm curious about is whether I can directly to determine whether I would be safer traveling 1000 miles on Amtrak or 1000 miles on an airplane by looking at those statistics.
My question is, when a 747 lands on someone's home and kills them, or a P42 strikes an automobile stopped in a grade crossing and an occupant of that automobile dies more or less instantly, is that counted as a death against the travel statistics? (I get the impression the latter is a lot more common than the former, even if we substitute the generic ``passenger airplane'' and ``passenger locomotive''.)
If so, does looking at passenger rail safety statistics leave one with the impression that buying an Amtrak ticket and boarding the train is dramatically less safe than it actually is if the automobile passenger deaths are mixed in with the train passenger deaths?
