Are airplanes more reliable and safer than cars?

Well, it’s a perennial question that has many answers, unfortunately, none of them are convincing and sufficient. both airplanes and cars have their own perks and pitfalls. Some of you might love to travel by airplanes while some prefer cars (especially heart patients). So, I think it’s a choice rather than safety and reliability whether someone wants to travel by car or plane.

Of course, an airplane can take you to your destination within just a few hours. While in the case of cars, you might experience traffic jams and during rush hours, you might lose that meeting. Even worse, you are more likely to get hit by other vehicles if you don’t follow the traffic rules.


I am not saying you will not meet with an accident when you travel by airplane, but statistics (from the united states government) also say that chances of surviving an airplane crash are higher than surviving a fatal car accident. Though air travel is boring, it is safe and reliable. It is also believed that an air crash doesn’t kill people, what actually kills people is their fear of death from that crash.

If you don’t trust my words, just go and open the newspaper of your locality of any date. I bet you, you would hardly find a single day without reading any news headlines of car accidents. Car accidents happen every day across the globe. you’ll not find the same thing with airplanes as they don’t crash all the time. This is because anyone (whether skilled or unskilled) can drive cars but only professionally highly skilled pilots can fly an airplane.

At the end of the day, we all see our bank balance and travel expenses before going anywhere. So, our budget also plays an important rule by which (whether a car or an airplane) we are going to travel.

Simply, yes, airplanes have to pass such stringent tests to international standards, and rightly so, that if the deaths from airplane accidents are compared with those from road traffic the comparison is stark.

Yet we don't fuss about starting off on a car journey like we do over a flight, do we? You can think of the skill of the pilot, his training and his supervision prior to flight in comparison with Mr Everyman who is driving the car, even if that is you! Who is the more competent? who has the more advanced and reliable vehicle?

In the common sense of it, most people would say traveling by car is safer than traveling in the air, but that is not the case. Statistics show that the percentage rate of safe journeys made by airplanes is more than that made by cars. But you can chronologically think that a structure which can be so big runs some distance on land and takes off into the atmosphere as high as it wants to, then travel on a long distance in the sky without having a sight of the normal earthly physical structures.

How can this be safer? But the fact is that almost every week, if not every day, accidents by car are being recorded. And hardly would you hear of two plane crashes throughout the whole year, not even in this era where technology has really advanced, and air transportation has been really improved on. Thousands of people die by land transportation across the world every year, but the fatal occurrence of air transportation far less than a thousand in a year throughout the whole world.

Traveling in an airplane or in a car have their advantages as well as disadvantages. Many people are of the opinion that traveling by air is safer and more reliable than by road (car).

If you travel by air, you are more likely to get to your location in time compared to someone that travels by road.

Car accidents are more common than an airplane crash. There is no day across the entire globe that there is no record of car accidents.

Anyone can drive a car, as long as you are licensed to do so, but only a highly skilled (professional) pilot can fly an airline. This explains the reason why there is less airplane crash than car accidents.