Though you FEEL safe when you put your child in a car, you are actually safer when you put your child on a plane. Feelings and reality are often not in agreement. Though you are MORE IN CONTROL OF FEELINGS when driving, you are LESS IN CONTROL OF SAFETY.
It is kind of a ‘no brainer’ when you consider there has not been a single passenger fatality in the U.S. or Canada in a ‘third generation’ jet. (757 and higher in Boeing; 319 and higher in Airbus, all BRJ and CRJs) but the same is far from true on the highways.
If you consider – not just third generation jets but – all airline flying in the past twenty-five years, driving 10.8 miles on an uncongested rural Interstate highway (the safest highway driving) that much driving is EQUAL in terms of fatality (not accident, but fatality) as a flight to Tokyo!
This makes it possible to understand three things:
1. Driving 500 miles, you expose yourself and your child to the risk of FIFTY FLIGHTS
2. You are PHYSICALLY safer if you fly, but . . .3. you are emotionally NOT as safe. You could have high anxiety; you could panic.
Choosing between physical and emotional safety is a really hard choice. But you don’t have to.
I know it is hard to really understand you are safer in the air. So don’t just take my word for it. When you get on the plane and meet the captain, ask him or her if being in the cockpit or being in the driver’s seat of a car is more comfortable for him or her.
