By Sid Perkins
Flying within the United States remains a much safer way to travel than driving, even when accounting for airline fatalities resulting from the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. According to a new analysis of transportation safety, the average nonstop flight in the United States spans roughly 1,150 kilometers, and the risk of death from driving that distance is about 65 times that from flying.
Most risk from air travel is associated with takeoffs and landings, says Michael Sivak, a psychologist at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor. Worldwide, about 95 percent of airline fatalities between 1991 and 2001 occurred during those phases of flight, so the risk of flying doesn’t depend for the most part on the distance traveled.