Give only a small fraction of people the ability to drive after significant training, and make driving their full time job, and you'll probably see crashes decline significantly.
It’s probably best we return to the tried, true, and most importantly safe system: leaded gasoline.
(I think you're thinking of avgas, which is used by piston-driven engines. These don't appear much in commercial aviation anymore.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel
[2]: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/leaded-aviation-fuel-and-enviro...
Because physics gives it such a huge advantage that it allows aviation to sit on its lead and waste some speed to pursue safety and still beat trains even where trains are very efficient and dense such as Europe. It remains to be seen what will happen now that Japan is about to enter a phase of quasi-jet speed type trains.
The fact that every time you board on a plane you are treated like a criminal who is about to enter prision is unacceptable and would have never been unacceptable in the 1980s regardless of what would have happened terrorism-wise. Matter of fact the 80s were the peak era of terrorism
> > consumers demand that they do....Humans are notoriously bad at estimating risk
Of course....and of course. A rational person's preoccupation should be reducing the chances to die from any cause, because once you are dead it's not that important what was the cause, doesn't it? It's very irrational to put heavy pressure on airlines and airports when 15 minutes after you exit from the terminal you enter in a mall and some neo-Nazi can absolutely blow up your brain with an assault rifle they bought without having to do not even an ID check, and I mean blow you up to the tune that your family members cannot even hold an open casket cerimony.
> > it's unclear why private cars get put in the "acceptably dangerous"
Because driving is a very powerful action, you turn the wheel right and the car goes right, turn left and it goes left, accelerate and it will speed up, break and it will come to a halt. It makes people feel very powerful and in control, people feel in control not only conceptually but in a limbic way, so they demand way less safety standards.
Trains don't give that feeling because people aren't driving but people can at least wrap their minds around trains as vehicles, commercial passenger planes look so big and feel so gross and non suitable for flight that people are very suspicious of them. Nobody is afraid of cars, trains or ships, but fear of flight is one of the most common fears. Commercial passenger plaens after 9/11 forget about it you get to the aforementioned current day scenario where you are treated like a criminal every time you are boarding a plane
(Independently: the bigger reason the FAA and airlines take security seriously is because consumers demand that they do, not just because the planes themselves are expensive. Humans are notoriously bad at estimating risk.)