This one confuses me. Isn’t air travel statistically an extremely safe mode of transport due to the heavy safety regulation?
How is this even mentioned in this list?
I guess i’m missing something here…
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This is a guess, but I imagine that the majority of this number are single-engine / light aircraft pilots. Think of bush pilots / couriers / adventure pilots / flight instructors / test pilots / small cargo craft pilots / etc. Probably includes helicopter pilots too? Commercial, multi-engine jet travel is statistically extremely safe; I am not sure that safety record extends to other flight modalities.
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Ah, that’d make more sense. Thank you
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US Presidential Assassin is also quite a risky career.
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I can’t remember where I heard, or read, this stat, but here goes:
Most of air travel mileage occurs, naturally, way up in the air where there is nothing to bump into etc.
But if you take the mileage from just the take-offs and landings, where the majority of accidents occur, then it is statistically safer to ride a motorbike through the heart of London during rush hour.
This is probably made-up bullshit, but it struck me as a funny thing to do with stats.
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I had to struggle with that one a while, but I think I’ve done pretty well in that regard. I know my reaction if I even think I’ve hurt someone I love, so I do seem to have broken that part of the cycle! (It’s not the only reason I never had kids, but that consideration does figure into it.)
That was a moment that made me think it was possible, but the actual resolution wasn’t until decades later.
He unfortunately slipped back into the bottle soon after getting out of the hospital. Fast forward a few decades, he managed to drive off everyone in the family except his mother and the dogs – he really hit bottom then. He finally got the help he needed, both for his mental health and to get him off the alcohol.
We reconnected a few years before he died and while we were never as close as we could have been, we had some healing. He got to meet two of my partners (and welcomed them both as such,) we visited him a few times, and I got to tell him I was proud of him for making 15 years sober.
I knew the end was coming, though, when he called me before going into the hospital for another round (forth? fifth?) of cancer treatments. We immediately booked a flight to visit and got to spend some time with him before the end. He did not make it to that last round of treatments.
I can trace most of my depression to my parents, especially him. Sometimes trying to reconcile the person I knew before and after he was sober is almost impossible. I’m not sure if we ever would have gotten over those hurdles, but I like to think we would have. I’m just glad that chainsaw didn’t take away even the incomplete version we got.
(I’ve sometimes wondered what he would think of me as I’ve found a new path, a gender that fits me better, a new name. I’m just not sure. I was happily surprised by his brother who’s essential reaction was “I can’t say I understand all of it, but if you’re happy with it that’s all that matters to me.”)
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Horse trainers also have dangerous AF jobs, esp those who specialize in young 'uns and difficult adult horses.
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It drove me crazy when the police and their apologists would respond to demands of reform with, “Oh, but we’re having more line of duty deaths than ever before!” as if things had gotten really dangerous for them, and it wasn’t just down to police unions having been fighting over requirements for vaccines and masks because they had bought into the right-wing culture war self-destructive bullshit.
I think I’ve seen some stats that did, but I don’t know if it was within the context of “most dangerous jobs” stats. I know things like heart attacks (often) get included in those stats, though (while not being included for other jobs).
They’re up at the top of the list, but apparently less than cops. Not nearly as much less as the copaganda would have you believe, though…
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Flying in commercial aircraft is extremely safe “per passenger mile”. That means one plane with 100 passengers that makes one safe flight of 1000 miles will have logged 100,000 passenger miles.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/
According to the NSC chart, the risk of any one person dying as a result of the flight would have been 0.000001%.
If the flight was cancelled, those hundred people might have driven the 1000 miles to the destination instead. Any one person’s risk of dying from being in a car during that trip would then have been 0.00054%.
The differences are huge: one trained, medically inspected, competence tested, and biannually certified professional pilot vs 100 drivers who mostly had to pass a vision test; professionally maintained and inspected vehicles instead of whatever rolling junk you can pour gas in; a robustly monitored air traffic control system vs some signs, lights, and cops; and of course many times fewer hazards like traffic, pedestrians, wildlife, etc. And all that contributes to the overall outcome of safety, as we can see reflected in the statistics.
So yes, flying commercially is much safer than making the same trip in a car.
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Aircraft pilots and flight engineers
This seems like an obsolete statistic. Flight engineers have been mostly/completely phased out of flight crews for something like 30 years. The FE has been replaced by aircraft automation, allowing the now-standard two-person flight crews.
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Cropdusting and commuting AK last-minute before/‘after’ a storm and getting grounded by a microburst hurts plenty. Still, look at ‘helper’…wouldn’t want to be one o’ those?!?
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I wonder why construction work is so dangerous? 
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What’s a bit interesting about that is that “Driver/sales workers & truck drivers” apparently makes number 6; and at least some cops certainly log a whole lot of road time.
I’d be curious to know how the difference breaks down: is it just that that labor category is very specifically road-heavy; rather than combining high-driving beat cops and their much less driving station-job staff; for much higher average miles driven? Do the ticketing powers mean that driving a marked police vehicle is substantially safer per mile than driving something else; just because people avoid doing stupid or illegal things? Only fairly committed criminals pulling guns on the cops when they roll up; but attempting to seize a driver’s delivery is more common? Some combination of the above?
My understanding is that a lot of the danger of policing is in the driving; so it’s interesting to see another driving-related job land some notches ahead.
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I’d be curious if it’s related to limitations in the data sources:
Between the FAA’s oversight of pilots while flying; and the NTSB’s interests in pilots whose failure to fly is sufficiently drastic; I’d imagine that piloting is a relatively well-documented profession; helped by the fact that a lot of the oversight apparatus is justified by either the strong and longstanding interest in the flying they do being quite safe; and the more recent security-fed interest in suspecting that pilots actively trying to be irregular might be up to something.
Roofing, though, offers a vast number of small, low-budget, jobs that encourage aggressively cost-optimized and not necessarily formal labor sourcing; and aren’t exactly risking a visit from OSHA(which, along with NIOSH, labors under the disadvantage of being seen as an actual worker safety entity that must be stymied, underfunded, or litigated against where possible).
I’d be(morbidly) curious what the numbers look like for fall and power tool injuries and fatalities consistent with roofing and similar construction work that turn up among people who were definitely not employed in roofing, see, no I-9 here, at the time.
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To me that reads as “young new guy, given the shitty jobs with inadequate training (or none) from older workers with years of acquired bad habits regarding safety”.
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The self-awareness and drive to not bury those painful emotions under booze, drugs, unfulfilling sex, anger or violence is the key. That you’re aware of (and pained by) hurting loved ones is how the cycle is broken. We may not be everything we aspire to, but the distance between what we came from and what we are now is much greater than what we are and what we aspire to, I’m sure.
I obviously didn’t know your father, but if he’s anything like my uncle, that in itself is massive. My uncle’s son was gay and mostly estranged for most of the late 80’s to 90’s (he would still show up to occasional holidays, but I never saw him in the same room as his father, an evangelical pastor). Unfortunately, that was just before AIDS awareness and therapies were developed, so he contracted HIV, withered slowly without his family and died a young man. At his funeral three of his friends, and I assume possible partners, showed up to our rural farmstead graveyard to pay their respects (bedazzled cowboy boots and all!). I was astonished that my fire-and-brimstone uncle not only approached them, but gave them all hugs in turn and spent a moment grieving with them. It was both beautiful and gut-wrenching and all I could think of was how much more time they could have had if he’d done that sooner. We love you and miss you, Greg. 
Whew, that was a lot of memory. I’m really happy for where you’re at now and, again, thanks for sharing. A lot of BBSers share your pain and…
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Thanks for that video. Some weird bits 
Also, thanks for the reminder of this…
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If laborers are in a union, they get training. If they aren’t in a union, they get trial by fire, sometimes quickly followed by death. This second part is why roofers are also high on the list. 
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