BY SCIENCE BRIDGE ACADEMY
During holidays, many of us will take the opportunity to travel somewhere, perhaps overseas.
With low cost air-lines abundant, many of us can afford to fly instead of having to drive or take the train. But would it in fact, be safer to do the latter?
Since the occurrences of various flight incidences in the past few years, it would be perfectly normal to be concerned.
Roughly one in four people suffer from a crippling fear of air travel, according to British Airways, and perhaps this number would have risen recently. But the reality is that there has never been a safer time to board a plane, thanks to better crew training and advances in technology.
Over the past 20 years, the rate of fatal accidents has fallen by more than two-thirds from roughly 0.7 per million flights to about 0.2 per million — or one fatal crash for every five million aircraft departures.
As far as transportation is concerned, by far the riskiest way to go anywhere is to take a motorcycle.
Mile-for-mile (which is not an entirely fair comparison, as we generally fly further than we bike), motorcycling is more than 3,000 times deadlier than flying.
Travelling in a car or truck is about 100 times deadlier than flying. Travelling by train can end up a little less grisly – it’s only twice as deadly, mile-for-mile, as flying.
One thing is for sure, though – regardless of what we do, or how we travel, we are all ultimately going to leave this earth at some point.
So, weigh in the risks but let it not rule our lives.
