Perceived risk
After my near-death fall in early 2006, I said that my attitude to life hadn’t changed - I’d always appreciated my fortunate life, loved ones etc… But, 18 months on, I think some of my attitudes have changed. In particular, my attitude towards risk and, more specifically, risk taking. I am now more aware of how dangerous the world is and how many ‘freak’ accidents there really are. Maybe its PTS?
For example, about a month ago, I travelled to Townsville with Jetstar and had two mildly distressing experiences: 1) on our final approach into Townsville, the pilot was too low and had to readjust; and 2) on our approach into Sydney the pilot extended the flaps and banked sharply to the right, lost altitude and had to reposition the aircraft back to the original course. Which got me thinking, how safe is air transport?
Well, based on this report, high capacity Regular Public Transport (i.e., big commercial airliners) fly approximately 1 million hours per year in Australia. The accident rate in 2005 was 0.11 accidents per 1 hundred thousand hours flown, or 1 per 1 million hours flown. That means, if one flies Sydney-Townsville 4 times a year, for example, the risk of being involved in an accident is as follows: 3.5 hours per leg X 8 legs flown = 28 hours. Ergo, the probability of being involved in an accident = 28/1000000 = 0.000028. Of course, the probability that you, personally, would be injured or killed depends on another whole range of variables, such as fatalities per accident etc. (Although keep in mind that Jetstar pilots fly an extra 300 hours per year compared to Qantas pilots and fly larger, more complicated places, such as the Airbus A320, for half the pay - not to mention the training etc).
When it comes to road safety, there were 1650 road deaths in 2005, from about 200 billion km of vehicle use (here). If you drive, say, 10 000 km per year, the probability of being killed is 0.0000825. Meaning that you are at least 4 times more likely to die driving than flying - but rates for both are generally low.
Like I said to Ben and Timtim, “I’m not really worried about dying, I just don’t want to die this weekend” - especially on a Jetstar flight. Man, I’d be so annoyed 
June 11th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
The two recent hospital stays seem to have brought it all back - they probably didn’t give you the “you won’t remember a thing” drug these times!
Perhaps you should just stay away from Jetstar - after all, they won’t let you take your bike on their flights so where is the reason to fly with them??
A flight with John in the Jabiru and a trip up the Pacific Highway in Duncan’s new beast should do the trick and desensitise you just fine.
June 25th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Guess who went to this?
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/06/24/1182623748432.html