What is the riskiest means of transportation?

Passenger vehicles are by far the most dangerous motorized transportation option compared. Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 20 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 595 times higher than for scheduled airlines.



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The main finding: Automobiles are one of the most deadly ways to get from Point A to Point B, with 7.28 deaths for every billion passenger miles. This fatality rate was 17 times as high as the rate for trains, which stood at 0.43 deaths per billion miles. Subways, buses and planes are even safer still.

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Transportation options: from safest to least safe
  • Airplanes. While they may be highly publicized when they occur, commercial passenger airline accidents are extremely rare. ...
  • Buses. Second only to air travel, traveling by bus is one of the safest modes of transportation in the United States. ...
  • Train. ...
  • Boat. ...
  • Cars. ...
  • Motorcycles.


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A motorist is almost 20 times more likely to die in a crash involving a train than in a collision involving another motor vehicle.

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Commercial air travel ranks as the safest form of transportation in terms of deaths per billion miles traveled, with .

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Your odds of being in an accident during a flight is one in 1.2 million, and the chances of that accident being fatal are one in 11 million. Your chances of dying in a car crash, conversely, are one in 5,000. Want answers to more key questions in aviation? Check out the rest of our guides here!

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Airplanes are generally considered to be safer than cruise ships, as they have more stringent safety regulations and experienced pilots who can react quickly in an emergency.

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The accidents may raise questions about the safety of train travel. While flying on an airplane is the safest mode of long-distance travel, according to the International Air Transport Association, trains are your best option on the ground.

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Riding the railroad is far safer than traveling in a car or truck. As many know, driving on highways with high truck density can be a harrowing ride.

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While trains have more accidents, plane crashes typically kill a lot more people per incident.

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Traveling Safely In fact, when you look more closely at the data, you find that bus and train fatalities occur much less often than airplane crashes. For example, in 2016, there were only 0.7 fatalities per billion passenger miles traveled on a bus versus 1.06 for air travel.

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Safety on the Highway Driving on the highway is, statistically speaking, the most dangerous way to travel. Drivers have a 1 in 114 chance of dying in a motor vehicle crash, and a 1 in 654 chance of dying as a car occupant.

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Bus travel is considered four times safer than taking a train and fifty times safer than riding in a passenger vehicle. The most recent statistics released by the United States Department of Transportation listed 35 occupant fatalities on buses, compared to 12,355 passenger vehicle fatalities in the same year.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says approximately every three hours, a person or vehicle crashes with a train in the U.S. About half of all crossing collisions occur at highway-rail intersections with flashing lights or gates leaving nearly 1,000 people dead each year as a result.

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According to the Federal Railway Administration's Office of Safety Analysis (FRA), the United States sees over 1,000 train derailments per year. In 2022, the total number of derailments reached 1,734—an increase of 88 compared to 2021.

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We often get the question “Is Amtrak safe for single woman”, the short answer is yes. You are in a train car full of people. One of the great things about Amtrak is the space. On airplanes the seats are so close together that it's hard to avoid touching your seat mates.

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When flying over land, of course it is more likely that there will be more airfields closer to the aircraft at any given time. However, because of lessons learned from its history and the improvements in aircraft and engine reliability, crossing the oceans is deemed as safe as flying over land.

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Thankfully, very few cruise ships have actually sunk in modern history. Even so, the Titanic's sinking impacted maritime law so much that there are more than enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew onboard any given sailing. Within the last 111 years, over 20 cruise ships and ocean liners have sunk.

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Are small planes less safe than larger? It might seem that way, but there are other contributing factors. In a nutshell, the size of an airplane is not in any way linked to safety, explains Saj Ahmad, chief analyst at StretegivAero Research.

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