>The air travel industry is undeniably safe, moreso than any transportation system ever.

I disagree: the Japanese shinkansen bullet train system has never had a fatal accident, except for a single incident 30 years ago when someone was caught in a door and dragged 100 meters. No fatalities from collisions, derailings, etc., ever, since the 1960s. That's far safer than air travel could ever claim to be.

Even other train systems have better records than commercial aviation, in general. Plane crashes are rare these days, but they still happen once in a while, and the results are usually catastrophic.

Are planes safer than cars? Well of course, but that's a really, really low bar: cars are driven by all kinds of morons who frequently (esp. in the US) have little to no training or testing, are frequently distracted, don't have a copilot who can take over at any time, and are frequently operating in a very, very chaotic environment (like city streets). It's truly a wonder there aren't more fatal crashes. But safer than trains in general? I seriously doubt it.

Actually, the Shinkansen seems to average ~100 billion passenger-km per year [1] or ~60 billion passenger-miles per year. Using that as a overestimate for the last 60 years, that is a grand total of 3.6 trillion passenger-miles.

US commercial aviation averages ~1 trillion passenger-miles per year [2]. So if we compare the last 4 years of US aviation that is a comparable number of passenger-miles.

Over the last 4 years recorded on this dataset (2019-2022)[3] it looks like there were 5 fatalities total. Over the last 4 years recorded on this dataset (2018-2021)[4] it looks like there were 2 fatalities total.

So, while it does not appear to be safer, it is within a few factors on a passenger-mile basis. Furthermore, there are multiple periods of 4 trillion consecutive passenger-miles where there were 0 recorded accidents. It nowhere near obvious that it is “far safer than air travel could ever claim to be” and certainly a much closer race than you believed given your other assertions.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1262752/japan-jr-high-sp...

[2] https://www.transtats.bts.gov/traffic/

[3] https://www.bts.gov/content/us-air-carrier-safety-data

[4] https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca...

That's not exactly a fair comparison, because you're comparing distances traveled, rather than trips taken. Of course planes are going to look good, since they travel much longer distances than cars or trains, and because planes are more likely to have trouble when taking off or landing than any time in-between. It's not like you can just take a commercial airliner flight to go to your local grocery store, even though statistically you're more likely to get killed on that trip than on a cross-continent flight.

First of all, passenger-distance per event (or its inverse) is the standard metric used when comparing transportation safety. You would be hard-pressed to find any broad, rigorous comparison that does not compare on that metric. It encodes the risk of a trip to a location of a certain distance. It is absolutely a fair comparison.

Second of all, even if we do use your metric which only cares about passenger-trips per event it still does not matter. The Shinkansen has transported ~6.4 billion people since inception. As seen in the second link I provided above, US commercial aviation serves ~900 million passengers per year. So, that is 7 years of US commercial aviation to transport the same number of people the Shinkansen has ever transported. As seen on the third link the last 7 years (2016-2022) had ~6 fatalities and as seen on the fourth link the last 7 years (2015-2021) had 2 fatalities compared to the 1 fatality on the Shinkansen.

Third of all, given that the Shinkansen has transported ~6.4 billion people, but averages 150 million people per year and ~60 billion passenger-miles per year, we can reasonably conclude that I overestimated at ~3.6 trillion passenger-miles and it would likely actually be ~2.4 trillion passenger miles or just 2.5 years of US aviation. From the third link that would be a mere 1 fatality and from the fourth link 0-1 fatalities.

If we extend our analysis to the last decade the third link indicates 15 fatalities over ~10 trillion passenger miles, ~2x the Shinkansen rate, and the fourth link indicates 2 fatalities over ~10 trillion passenger miles, ~50% the Shinkansen rate. Again, broadly comparable, but it is hard to truly tell which one is "safer" than the other. And again, they are clearly in the same ballpark and not dramatically different as you implied.

> So how do we get to the place where we choose to build systems that behave correctly? I don't think we get there without severe penalties for failure.

What failure? The planes work. This is puritanism.

Elevators would like a word with you.

https://nationalelevatorindustry.org/elevators-escalators-ar...

Their deaths-per-passenger-mile stats are worse, though.

US airlines haven't had a single fatal crash in 15 years.

https://nypost.com/2019/08/22/video-shows-moment-man-crushed...