IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/riskan/v11y1991i1p145-148.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nonstop Flying Is Safer Than Driving

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Sivak
  • Daniel J. Weintraub
  • Michael Flannagan

Abstract

The relative safety of driving and flying is important in many situations that involve selecting a mode of transportation. The traditional view, that flying via scheduled airlines is safer than driving, has recently been challenged by Evans et al.(1) They concluded that for a low‐risk driver it is safer to drive on rural interstate highways (the safest roads) than to fly if the trip length is less than 602 miles. We reestimated the fatality probabilities for flying by taking into account that the risk of flying is dependent on the number of nonstop segments flown, but, for all practical purposes, is independent of the length of the trip. Our calculations indicate that, for average or high‐risk drivers, it is always safer to fly than to drive. Furthermore, even for a low‐risk driver, nonstop flying is safer than driving on rural interstate highways for a trip distance of more than 303 miles; the corresponding breakeven distances for flights that involve two and three segments are 606 and 909 miles, respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Sivak & Daniel J. Weintraub & Michael Flannagan, 1991. "Nonstop Flying Is Safer Than Driving," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(1), pages 145-148, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:11:y:1991:i:1:p:145-148
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.1991.tb00584.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1991.tb00584.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1991.tb00584.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leonard Evans & Michael C. Frick & Richard C. Schwing, 1990. "Is It Safer to Fly or Drive?," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(2), pages 239-246, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Adam Rose & Misak Avetisyan & Heather Rosoff & William J. Burns & Paul Slovic & Oswin Chan, 2017. "The Role of Behavioral Responses in the Total Economic Consequences of Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Air Travel Targets," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(7), pages 1403-1418, July.
    2. Erhan Erkut & Armann Ingolfsson, 2000. "Catastrophe Avoidance Models for Hazardous Materials Route Planning," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 165-179, May.
    3. Cameron A. MacKenzie, 2014. "Summarizing Risk Using Risk Measures and Risk Indices," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(12), pages 2143-2162, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arnold Barnett, 2020. "Aviation Safety: A Whole New World?," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(1), pages 84-96, January.
    2. Erhan Erkut & Armann Ingolfsson, 2000. "Catastrophe Avoidance Models for Hazardous Materials Route Planning," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 165-179, May.
    3. Fischbeck, Paul S. & Gengler, Barbara & Gerard, David & Weinberg, Randy S., 2007. "An Interactive Tool to Compare and Communicate Traffic Safety Risks: TrafficSTATS," Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, Transportation Research Forum, vol. 46(3).
    4. Nancy L. Rose, 1992. "Fear of Flying? Economic Analysis of Airline Safety," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 75-94, Spring.
    5. Rossiter, Adriana & Dresner, Martin, 2004. "The impact of the September 11th security fee and passenger wait time on traffic diversion and highway fatalities," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 225-230.
    6. William R. Freudenburg & Cynthia‐Lou Coleman & James Gonzales & Catherine Helgeland, 1996. "Media Coverage of Hazard Events: Analyzing the Assumptions," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(1), pages 31-42, February.
    7. Cameron A. MacKenzie, 2014. "Summarizing Risk Using Risk Measures and Risk Indices," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(12), pages 2143-2162, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:11:y:1991:i:1:p:145-148. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1539-6924 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.