Short trips are more dangerous per-mile, and per-minute, than long trips. A minute of driving to the corner store is vastly more prone to accident than a minute of driving a stretch of interstate. NYC to LA probably has a higher risk than driving to the corner store, but only because you stop by the corner store every so often on the trip. So it may not be the case that the short trips "dilute" the statistics, especially per-mile.

> Short trips are more dangerous per-mile, and per-minute, than long trips.

That's possible, but the longer trip is still more dangerous per trip.

It puts the numbers in context. The risk to any given passenger of taking an average flight (however many miles that is, pretty far) is about the same as the risk of the same person taking an average car trip (a shorter number of miles but still people don't think twice about it).