General aviation crashes tend to have completely different causes than airliner accidents. Pilot error and maintenance issues are the biggies.

Those are the two that tend to get the airliners too honest. Either the machine fails or the person flying it does.

If you want to get technical about it nearly all plane fatalities are caused by a lack of altitude, but that's a different story.

Isn't that a bit like auto accidents vs motorcycle accidents? Although closely related, one mode of transport is inherently more dangerous. And that more dangerous mode is only used by a small subset of the population.

I think it's more like the difference between taking a bus vs driving yourself.

Or semi vs passenger car.