Statistics isn't a feeling, and the comparison is correct in that, on average, air travel is significantly safer than car travel. One should note, however, that the "on average" is the key bit, as one might argue that drivers in accidents have some special characteristic at work making them more susceptible than most, but claiming that Schneier or his source is making a false comparison somehow is simply unfair and untrue. Moreover, plenty of fatal auto accidents are not the explicit fault of those that die (drunk driver, someone else texting while driving, semi-trucker not paying attn). So "feeling safe" is worth nothing when you're staring down the grim reaper in the grill of the semi that switched lanes without signalling to pass without seeing you.

Sometimes it's unavoidable - you're stopped at a light and someone crosses the median to plow into you. In that situation, you are screwed.

But often, there is something you as the not "at fault" party could have done to avoid the collision (even with the drunk driver), had you been paying attention enough to see the situation. Change lanes. Slow down. Speed up. Leave more room. Leave less room. Always, no matter what, be looking.

Once I prevented myself from getting rear-ended at a traffic light: I was stopped and saw someone coming up behind me way too fast. I leaned on my horn, they clued in, and braked in time to stop just touching my fender. (I was in a motorcyle at a time, so REALLY happy with the outcome.)

Again, sometimes it really is unavoidable - but in a surprising number of situations there are actions a driver can take to avoid or reduce the severity of the incident.

Insurance companies understand this - that's why your rates raise when you get in an accident, regardless of whether you're legally "at fault".

Driving well and alertly doesn't end at the bounds of legal fault. Sure if you were rear-ended someone else will pay damages - but if you're in a wheelchair or dead, that money isn't going to make things better.

So to GP's point: there are a LOT of things that are far more under your control when you're driving. Falling out of the sky... not so much.

I've had people tell me "I don't even remember the last 60 seconds" after inducing a spin in a vehicle. It's a scary thought.

I doubt that even the best driver can get safer than an airliner. It's going to be hard to measure. For one, it's almost impossible to measure the risk of a "safe" driver compared to an unsafe one. For another, it's almost impossible to measure the risk of American airline travel today, because fatalities are so rare that it's no longer possible to turn them into a meaningful number. That last part suggests to me that even the safest driver will be far more at risk on the road than in a plane.

I've been rear-ended multiple times. None of the drivers that hit me were drunk or intoxicated. I still had no control over their actions. Short of not driving at all there was no action I could have taken that would have prevented me from being hit. I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time (e.g., I had been fully stopped for about 60 seconds at a stoplight, not in rush hour traffic, when the light turned green and I was almost instantly hit from the rear. I was about 16 cars back from green light, and there was no way I could have been rolling. But, the driver behind me saw the light turn green and decided that traffic would be moving before he reached my location.)

Dig up statistics about traffic fatalities, and see how many of them were caused by someone else. Here you can see that one third of casualties are not even drivers: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1105.p...

Comparing total casualties is very deceptive, since cars rack up many more passenger miles than airliners. Still, cars kill lots of people and car safety is a high-value goal.

Once we get self-driving cars that are significantly better at avoiding accidents and mitigating severity of accidents, this all will change in very significant ways. It will certainly result in many more people avoiding the TSA.

There is another interesting way of thinking about this. They might be more inclined to use air travel than road because the 'element of control' is lost from them in both modes of travel. So they would then compare the time it takes to reach the destination and since air travel is faster, they might even end up sucking up the TSA pat-downs.

Once self driving cars come, airlines will rediscover service and make 80% of their customers pre-checked or they will lose half their business.

In many cases over land, they'll find that an autonomous car will be faster.

It would be just as "unfair" to compare driving against crop-dust pilots, which seem to more frequently end up in a crash.

That intuition is somewhat wrong, depending on how you define 'crash'. http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetystudies/SR0101.pdf table 2, shows 53,487 passengers involved in accidents, with 2,280 fatalities. Table 3 limits that to more serious accidents. There, of 2,739 passengers, 1,215 died, over half due to impact wounds.

Yes, a jet nosediving into hard rock will kill everybody on board, but one making a very rough 'landing' near first aid units? Not something to volunteer for, but not certain death, either.