TL;DR: General aviation dominates air-related fatalities in most of the years, being responsible for more than 95% of the air-related fatalities.
(This is an article which is consisted of three sections that I wrote for a writing course, AS.370.604 Academic Writing, in Spring 2018.)
Transportation Fatality Facts in the United States
Introduction
My pilot classmate Marcson Ngwa died from an airplane crash last month. On his way from Middle River, MD to Ocean City, MD with a passenger, their four-seat airplane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on February 28th, 2018. This accident led to the death of the pilot Ngwa, with the passenger still missing, asreported by the most recent National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation on March 15th(NTSB, 2018). His accident raised a question in my head: is aviation indeed the safest transportation mode as we are told by the airlines?
Unlike air carrier pilots holding Airline Transport Pilot certificates, who have thousands of hours of flight experience (Aeronautical experience - airplane category restricted privileges, 2017), Ngwa was a general aviation pilot holding a Private Pilot certificate, and had a total of approximately 81 hours of flight experience (NTSB, 2018). Noticing this difference, other questions arose: are these less experienced general aviation pilots more prone to airplane-related fatalities than those professional air carrier pilots? If this is true, does it work for other transportation modes such as boat pilots?
To answer the above questions, I retrieved the transportation fatality data from National Safety Council (2018). Furthermore, since air, water, highway, and railroad are among the listed transportation modes (National Safety Council, 2018), I would like to discuss the trends of these modes in order to alert and aid our future personal choice of transportation mode.
Data & Analysis
Table 2-1 shows the transportation fatalities by mode in the United States for selected years from 1960 to 2016 (National Safety Council, 2018). According to the table, the highway-related fatalities comprise the largest fraction (more than 90%), which have more than 30,000 fatalities every year. Overall, most of highway-related fatalities are from car occupants. However, this fraction is steadily decreasing, being responsible for ~1/3 of the total count in 2016. On the other hand, light truck occupants, the second largest group in highway-related fatalities, have increased their share from ~10% in 1975 to ~30% in 2016. As can be seen, since 2000, light-truck-related fatality count sets its record in 2005, in which it is responsible for more than 13,000 fatalities in that year: this also leads to the record high of total highway fatalities as well as total fatalities. However, both car- and light-truck-related fatality counts show downward trends since 2005, which result in the minimum total count in 2014.
Although the highway-related fatality count has been deceasing since 2000, which is primarily due to the reduction of car- and light-truck-related fatalities, the fatalities from motorcyclists, pedestrians, and pedalcyclists do not follow the trend. For motorcyclists, the fatality count skyrocketed from 790 in 1960 to nearly 5,000 in 2015, therefore if the user count of motorcycles stays the same, this statistic is illustrating a decline in safety for motorcyclists. For pedestrians and pedalcyclists, the yearly fatality counts are relatively leveled off after 2000, at nearly 5,000 and 700, respectively; however, caution still has to be taken for the pedalcyclists, whose fatality count reaches a 20-year high record in 2016.
Another noticeable transportation mode is airplane. The number of air-related fatalities has two leading factors: one is general aviation, the other is the air carrier. Starting from 1990, air-related fatalities reach their maximum in 2001 when the 9/11 attacks happened, which brings the count to 531 fatalities by air carrier. However, this number is still less than that of general aviation, which is 562 in that year. In fact, general aviation, the fatality count of which has been decreasing for more than 20 years, dominates air-related fatalities in most of the years, being responsible for more than 95% of the air-related fatalities. In comparison, air carrier pilots are required to have at least 1,000 hours of flight experience by the Federal Aviation Administration (Aeronautical experience - airplane category restricted privileges, 2017), however, the requirement is only 40 hours for general aviation (Aeronautical experience, 2017). Therefore, the fact that general aviation pilots are less experienced is likely to be the major reason for aviation fatalities. Similarly, recreational boating dominates the fatality fraction in water-related activities. Both the air- and water-related fatalities call for our concern on the fatalities brought by less experienced pilots.
For railroad related activities, most fatalities are from highway-rail crossings and trespassers. Starting from 2000, fatalities brought by highway-rail crossing are on a steady decline, which drops by nearly 50% from 2000 to 2015, indicating the increase of safety for highway-rail crossings. However, the fatalities of trespassers do not show a sign of reduction. Therefore, to reduce the railroad-related fatality count, it could be effective to deal with the trespassing events.
In summary, to reduce the transportation fatality count, we should not only focus on the steadily decreasing modes, but also on the non-decreasing ones: general aviation, motorcyclists, light truck occupants, pedestrians, pedalcyclists, railroad trespassers, and recreational boating. Further work in this area may lead to the comparison of the safety levels by the fatality rate of each mode (after being normalized by user counts), however such data are not provided in the table.
Conclusion
The total fatality count in the United States is on a decreasing trend, dropping from ~47,000 in 1990 to ~37,000 in 2015. Comparing the three major modes studied in this essay, highway is the dominant factor of fatality, responsible for more than 30,000 fatalities every year. The decreasing trend of total fatalities, therefore stems from the decline of highway-related fatalities. However, the reduction of highway-related fatalities is mainly from car and light-truck fatalities; on the contrary, motorcyclists’ fatality count follows an increasing trend, while pedestrians’ and pedalcyclists’ are relatively stable. Other noticeable transportation modes are air and water, and both of them are strongly suggesting that less-experienced pilots are constituting the majority of fatalities in each mode. To reduce the count of fatality for these modes, more training or higher certificate standards should be implemented for those less-experienced pilots.
Specifically, the lesson I learnt from the Ngwa case is to communicate with approach controls (NTSB, 2018). Even though communication with them is not required for private pilots, these agencies oversee all the aircrafts inside their controlling regions with radar. When fatal accidents happen, pilots can send distress signals directly to them, and they are able to help initiate a rescue mission immediately – this could maximize the probability of survival. Otherwise as in the Ngwa case, the rescuing teams kept waiting until the airplane was reported missing on the next day.
Being a less experienced private pilot than Ngwa, with only 71.9 hours of flight experience myself, the last thing I would like to hear about from others is airplane crash. However, if such things do happen, my own likelihood of survival can be maximized when appropriate precautionary procedures are carried out.
References:
Aeronautical experience - airplane category restricted privileges, (2017). 14 C.F.R. §61.160
Aeronautical experience, (2017). 14 C.F.R. §61.109
National Safety Council, (2018). Injury facts.
National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB], (2018). Aviation Accident Preliminary Report. NTSB No. ERA18LA094