RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

"How dangerous is flying? There are 16 fatal accidents per million hours of general aviation. It is fairly safe to assume that when a plane crashes and someone dies, everyone on board dies. By contrast, the death rate for automobile driving is roughly 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles. Car crashes don't always kill everyone in the car so let's use this statistic as provided, which is for an individual traveling in a car rather than for the entire car. So considering that the average airplane accomplishes a groundspeed of at least 100 miles per hour, those million hours of flight push the occupants of the plane over more than 100 million miles of terrain. Comparing 16 fatal accidents to the 1.7 rate for driving, we find that flying is no more than 10 times as dangerous per mile of travel. And since most accidents happen on takeoff or landing, a modern fast light airplane traveling a longish distance might be comparable in safety to a car.

By Philip Greenspun at http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety (whoever that is, I don't think he is making things up)"

EDIT: fyi, "general aviation" refers to non-airline civilian traffic

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#6

Post by cylinder » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 8:50 PM UTC

leterter wrote: post #3

Small planes are death traps...

Especially small stunt planes...

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#7

Post by hindsightbias » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 8:54 PM UTC

afterburner wrote: post #5

work_account_1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably still safer than driving though.

Maybe not, found this on http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... : "How dangerous is flying? There are 16 fatal accidents per million hours of general aviation. It is fairly safe to assume that when a plane crashes and someone dies, everyone on board dies. By contrast, the death rate for automobile driving is roughly 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles. Car crashes don't always kill every…

As a private pilot, small a/c flying is as safe as you make it. As much as pilots understand the concepts, they tend to fall back to baser instincts when an engine goes bad at the worst time.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#8

Post by Nicholas_C » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 8:55 PM UTC

swamp40 wrote: post #2

What an interesting story. Did anyone here ever meet him?

Makes me wonder how many other people there are like this living incredible lives fit for a movie. And here I am staring at excel.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#9

Post by ThomPete » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 8:58 PM UTC

I knew Martin very well.

He was part of a design agency I build in 2005 with Morten Lund and a brilliant designer called Michael Nilsson.

He had built a site called Vacation Valley that we helped him redesign and after that we joined forces.

Together we where involved in a bunch of fun projects (among others zecco.com which was originally build out of Copenhagen Denmark by hello)

He was a young and very very smart guy and knew a lot of people and was a great thinker and yes SEO wiz.

Who knows what he could have been today. I often think about him.

Re: RIP Martin Schaedel: 1985–2009

#10

Post by afterburner » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 9:12 PM UTC

hindsightbias wrote: post #7

afterburner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not, found this on http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... : "How dangerous is flying? There are 16 fatal accidents per million hours of general aviation. It is fairly safe to assume that when a plane crashes and someone dies, everyone on board dies. By contrast, the death rate for automobile driving is roughly 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles. Car crashes don't always kill every…

As a private pilot, small a/c flying is as safe as you make it. As much as pilots understand the concepts, they tend to fall back to baser instincts when an engine goes bad at the worst time.

Right, this is where the experience comes in I imagine, and the requirement for X amount of flight hours for Y job. It's not about how easy it is to fly in nominal conditions, but rather how those one in a thousand or million events get handled, in between the hours of "tedium".