I might appear to be a macho guy. I’ve been riding a motorcycle every sunny day for more than fifty years and been flying a single engine plane every month for forty-five years. That seems pretty macho, meaning I am a brave man comfortable flirting with death.
A motorcyclist has six times the chances of dying as a person in an automobile and a private pilot is considered even more at risk.
Lets look at the actual numbers. The chance that an ordinary American is likely to die in an auto fatality is roughly 2% during their lifetime; most people die of old age or the diseases of old age.
If someone rode a motorcycle as much as they rode in a car, the percent of motorcyclists killed on their bike would be 12% instead of included in the general number 2%; pretty horrendous. But people don’t ride motorcycles much, nor for such great distances, so the chance of actually dying on a motorcycle is about the same as dying in an auto. Now, if you do what I have done for fifty years, which is never ride at night, never in the rain and never on a freeway….a motorcycle is safer than a car. And great fun.
The pilot of a single engine plane has virtually no chance of actually being killed while flying. There are a couple hundred thousand licensed private pilots in the U.S. and less than ten die in plane crashes every year. Most of those ten either have had very little time in an airplane (John Kennedy) or are flying with instruments in bad weather. That is a high rate per license, but low in absolute terms. Death for a private pilot has about the same odds as being burned to death by your pajamas if you wear pajamas. I have personally reduced those odds even further by not flying at night, not getting an instrument license (meaning I can’t fly through clouds) and not flying inverted (doing aerobatics). Of course, I love flying which is why I do it so much. Every year, as I get more experience, I love it more.
Now you got it. Macho statistician. A person who does things that only seem dangerous.