Why the train is the safest mode of transport. What mode of transport is the safest

Statistics and public opinion on this issue vary greatly. One thing is for sure: There are no absolutely safe modes of transport.. Nevertheless, many fears of passengers before using this or that mode of transport are unfounded.

According to a survey conducted in 2006 All-Russian Center study of public opinion (VTsIOM), aircraft in terms of safety are located on last place, and rail transport came in first place.

A positive assessment of it is given by 70% of respondents, and only 15% consider it “certainly dangerous”. Negative Feedback aviation received. 84% of respondents believe that such travel is dangerous, and 33% - that it is very dangerous. Similar assessments were water transport: 44% perceive it as a dangerous way to travel, and only 39% as safe. And the most popular form of transport - road - is rated ambiguously: 48% consider it safe, 50% - dangerous.

The statistics say otherwise. Aircraft is considered the safest, followed by water and rail transport.. But cars are considered the most dangerous means movement. The data are calculated based on the number of victims when using a particular mode of transport.

We feel most secure in. But according to statistics, the number of accidents is much higher than in. Usually they are not so massive and receive less public outcry.

According to ICAO ( international organization civil aviation- the UN agency that establishes international standards for civil aviation), there is one accident per million departures, which cannot be said about car and other accidents. But any plane crash, even the smallest aircraft immediately attracts media attention. This contributes to the formation of a negative opinion about aviation as a very dangerous form of transportation.

However, the investigation of air crashes suggests that they occur due to a combination of the rarest circumstances, the possibility of which is minimal (air crash statistics).

The probability that a passenger boarding a plane will die in a plane crash is approximately 1/8,000,000. If a passenger boards a random flight every day, it will take him 21,000 years to die.

It is also erroneous to think that in the event of a plane crash, the chances of surviving are minimal. According to the results of the analysis 568 aviation accidents that took place in United States from 1983 to 2000, the death toll is only 5% of total number passengers on board. According to these statistics, out of 53,487 people involved in air crashes, 51,207 survived. As a result of a more detailed study of 26 serious accidents, accompanied by strong blows liners on the ground, their breaking into pieces and fires, it turned out that about 50% of the people on board were saved in these disasters (how to survive in a plane crash).

The probability of survival of the crew of passengers and pilots is increased if the aircraft makes an emergency splashdown, even if it was not designed for such measures. Experts say that splashdown increases the chances of people surviving by 50%.

Against the background of the statistics of air crashes, the statistics of accidents on the roads does not look very rosy. Only in Russian Federation 203,603 traffic accidents occurred in 2009, resulting in 26,084 deaths and 257,034 injuries.

Of course, if we take as a basis the number of kilometers traveled, then the safest mode of transport can be safely considered space. In the entire history of development, only 3 spacecraft did not reach the earth (2 for the Americans and 1 for us). By the way, space tourism, despite its cost, is becoming increasingly popular, and the number of people wishing to visit space is constantly growing.

November 5, 2015, 17:29

Due to some of the hype surrounding the all-know-what airline and the growing fears of gossips and other sufferers, I decided to write this post in defense of "aircraft" and aviation as such.

Here I will try to answer some, as it seems to me, questions that often pop up on Gossip and speak on the safety of aircraft as such.

Opinion: "It's terrible, in Russian aviation so many buckets of bolts that miraculously take off and miraculously land - every time, like Russian roulette."

Answer: this is both true and not true. More than that, I don't think it's true. Everywhere - in any country, in any airline there are planes in which something will be done / repaired that is not 100% perfect. An aircraft is a complex system that requires constant repair and maintenance; it is simply impossible to eliminate absolutely all errors and prevent all imperfections. But that doesn't make planes - not here, not anywhere else - a bucket of bolts. The design of the aircraft is based on the principle of MINIMALIZATION of damage to other parts of the structure, in the event of a malfunction of any one. Roughly speaking, if one thing breaks down, (with very rare exceptions) it is always possible to safely land the plane.

Also, it should be taken into account that any plane crash has a very strong impact on the image of the company and even the country, so no one will release the “bucket of bolts” into flight.

On trifles: an old plane is not necessarily bad, a slight shaking in the plane or, for example, going to the second round is not a reason to panic. You don't break into tears if you're shaking a little in the car, do you? It's just the nature of the road. So for an airplane, these are simply the features of the air corridor, provided for by the design of the aircraft and the preparedness of the pilot.

For clarity, we can take as a criterion - for how many flight hours a particular model, on average, had a disaster. The crashed A321 aircraft was from the Airbus A320 family - according to samolety.org, it corresponds to a result of 1 accident per 14 050 200 flight hours (and this is far from the worst result). The crashed plane had a total operating time 55 772 flight hours. For comparison, the most dangerous is the Boeing 737 JT8D with one crash in 507,500 flight hours.

Conclusion: A plane crash is always an exceptional case, caused by many factors. It is impossible to say that the entire fleet of aircraft of a company/airport/country is bad and it is dangerous to fly with them. Defects can be detected (almost) everywhere, a malfunction in itself cannot lead to a catastrophe, it can only lead coincidence .

How likely is this "coincidence"? Let's move on to the next question -

Opinion: "Airplanes are not the most without dangerous view transport?"

Answer: I think the picture will be indicative:

The picture shows the relative safety of different modes of transport compared per unit of distance traveled by them. Statistics are stubborn things.

Opinion: "Obviously, it was a bomb. How can an engine explode all of a sudden?"

Answer: maybe there was an explosion, maybe not. Theoretically, not only an explosion can lead to a breakdown of an aircraft. Once again, a plane crash is always Very complex investigation.

Can theoretically explode the engine - maybe. The engine may, for example, catch fire - and then you should turn it off completely. History knows safe landings when turning off both one and two engines (for example, Boeing crash 737 at New Orleans - the plane landed without thrust from both engines). And, for example, in 2010, even with an engine explosion, the plane landed safely (see the Incident with the Airbus A380 over Batam Island).

In a tense environment in society, it is natural that people easily see disasters as a terrorist act, but this is not necessarily the case. When an American Airlines airliner crashed into the New York suburb of Queens two months after 9/11, everyone assumed it was a terrorist attack until it was proven otherwise - turbulence and pilot error were to blame.

And now let's move on to the main thing - Why do planes still crash and what has been done for our safety?

The most common cause of air crashes is human error.

According to statistics, the reasons are distributed as follows:

Pilot errors - 50%:

unprovoked pilot errors - 29%,

pilot errors caused by adverse weather conditions - 16%,

pilot errors caused by equipment failures - 5%.

Aircraft failures - 22%.

Errors of ground personnel (air traffic controllers, aircraft technicians, etc.) - 7%.

Other reasons - 1%.

Most dangerous area flight - this is takeoff and landing due to low flight altitude and, as a result, lack of time to assess the problem and solve it.

The graph below shows the number of registered aviation incidents depending on the year. As you can see, the curve goes down. Further copy-paste from one site:

Every second there are from 4,000 to 10,000 aircraft in the air! Tens of thousands of flights are made every day. Every year, more than 5 billion people fly on airplanes, that is, figuratively, the entire population of the Earth. The total number of victims of air crashes is 300-400 people. ONE does not return from the flight! out of 12 million people. That is, in Moscow, conditionally, one person dies per year!

But in various accidents, the capital loses about 30 thousand people annually, i.e. 30,000 times more. It is much more dangerous to ride a bus, you are not afraid of buses, right? If a passenger takes a random flight every day, it will take him 21,000 years to have an accident.

My short commentary on possible flight hazards and preventive protection measures: as you can see, pilot error is the main reason. And a lot has been done in this area today - in addition to serious training, a lot of training on computer models, stress resistance tests, an autopilot has been introduced everywhere - this means that the autopilot is largely responsible for the flight, which is not frightened and not distracted, but steers the plane accurately in accordance with the data received from the devices. (from the shaking often mentioned by gossips, for example, it will lead). If necessary, the autopilot can be turned off - in case dangerous situations Pilots always have a "hazard instruction" with them, which clearly states what to do and how to get the aircraft out of danger.

Needless to say, even the hierarchy of pilots and their "freedom of action" are also strictly regulated?

Aircraft failures - with the development of the world, breakdowns occur less and less and even the worst hypothetical situations are better foreseen. For example, if an aircraft loses key flight altitude sensors, in today's globalized world it is possible to quickly dispatch a rescue aircraft to guide the "lost" aircraft to the airport.

Weather conditions - and everything is fine here. Now we are able to detect even such "little things" as micro-vortices and flocks of birds.

Terrorism - Act of terrorism in the air in the entire history of aviation, they are unlikely to count more than a couple of dozen. It’s always terrible when it does happen, but it’s impossible to say that this is a common phenomenon that you should be afraid of.

Controller errors - most likely a relic of the past - were almost always caused by poor technique, in a couple of cases by overworking them. The technology today is obviously much better and more accurate, and in order to prevent the second case, the rules for observing aircraft as such were largely revised - so that the load on the controller was reduced, and his actions were checked at the time.

Generally, I would like to wish us all a calm flight, without catastrophes and incidents. The dead will forever remain in the memory of people, any catastrophe is, of course, a huge loss and too high a price for the fact that we will learn something else and revise something else.

And finally, a few more facts about airplanes from the site (samolety.org):

The plane stays in the air as confidently as any car on the road, and the ship at sea.

In an airplane, absolutely all systems are duplicated, and some even have 2-3 spare duplicates: often in an airplane 4 brake systems, 3 chassis release systems, 3 fuel systems 3 fire fighting systems, 3 control systems, etc.

At passenger aircraft, least, two engines. The failure of all engines at once is negligible. For example, on average, a single engine failure occurs for 2 million flight hours, which is 228 years of continuous operation!

According to existing requirements for aircraft passenger aviation, the aircraft, in case of failure of one of the engines, must retain the ability to fly without reduction (at normal flight weight and in simple weather conditions) and safely make a normal landing.

For example, on the popular Boeing 737, the scheduled time for an emergency flight on one engine is 2 hours.

The engine is one of the most expensive parts of an aircraft. His price about 10 million dollars Therefore, they are very carefully monitored and cared for.

Each plane crash has its own reason, and often not one, but a combination of circumstances. Each such case is carefully studied and measures are taken to ensure that it does not happen again.

Every year, the total passenger traffic increases by 10%, and the number of accidents decreases by 15%.

The higher the level of development of logistics, the greater the role in obtaining high-quality information about the problems of transport enterprises and evaluating the results of their activities is played by the statistics of modes of transport. Processing data on industries and allows you to develop recommendations to reduce the cost of transportation, improve transport safety and make forecasts of costs for further development logistics systems.

Types of transport and principles for determining their safety

The statistics of modes of transport divides it into two groups. By service sector:

  • public use;
  • special purpose;
  • personal use.

By environment of use:


  • ground (wheel and rail);
  • underground (metro);
  • air;
  • space;
  • water and underwater;
  • pipeline.

Each of these groups has its own subgroups. The safest mode of transport is determined by statistics in three ways:

  1. By mileage.
  2. By number of trips.
  3. By travel time.

Each department pursues its own goals in choosing a method. The safe mode of transport is determined by the statistics of aviators by mileage. The distances that fly are long, and tragedies happen mainly during takeoff or landing.

Automotive industries determine which is the safest mode of transport statistically based on the number of trips.

The most dangerous/safest vehicles in the world


The statistical method used by the American bureau DETR (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions) is of interest. Their dangerous modes of transport are determined by statistics by the number of victims per 1 billion kilometers, the number of trips and the time spent. The table shows the results of the research:

Category Aviation Buses Railway transport Minibuses Water transport Cars Bicycles Motorcycles Hiking
By mileage 0,05 0,4 0,6 1,2 2,6 3,1 44,6 108,9 54,2
By number of trips 117 4,3 20 20 90 40 170 1640 40
By travel time 30,8 11,1 30 60 50 130 550 4840 220

What type of transport is the most dangerous according to statistics? As it turned out - a motorcycle. This type of transport is leading in all positions. Second place in terms of danger statistics of modes of transport gives a bicycle. In third place - and minibuses.

What is the safest mode of transport according to statistics in the world? As usual, aircraft are in the lead. In terms of safety, aviation is ahead of all others vehicles. Today, only spaceships can turn out to be less dangerous, and even then, depending on how you count.

The security situation varies greatly by region. accident statistics for different types transport shows that ignoring security measures inevitably leads to tragedies. Death rates in low-income countries are approaching 80% of the world's. If it refers to the observance of security measures, as in Bangladesh (pictured), then it will never be possible to reduce.

Transport safety rating in the Russian Federation

What is the safest mode of transport according to statistics in Russia? The indicators completely coincide in percentage terms with global figures. Despite the fact that 2016 was a record year for accidents, the aircraft is still considered a safe mode of transport. For comparison, 389 people died, while the road wars claimed 20,308 lives.

According to statistics, the most dangerous mode of transport in Russia is a motorcycle. Crashed motorcyclists on our roads 23% of the total number of deaths.

The remaining losses are distributed as follows:

  • motor transport - 31%;
  • pedestrians - 22%;
  • cyclists - 5%;
  • other traffic participants – 19%.

If we compare the mortality rate in Russia with countries such as the USA, Great Britain or Italy, it turns out that the figures are 15-16 times higher. Rosstat considers dead those who died within a week after. In Europe, it is customary to include in the statistics of deaths of dead people per month. Consequently, the indicators in the Russian Federation can be even higher if the European methodology is used.

FKU "Research Center for Security Problems traffic» revealed the negative dynamics of road accidents involving public transport(buses and trolleybuses). The main cause of accidents is traffic violations.

  • attempts to eliminate doubts about the reliability of the company and the poor quality of the work of the internal security service;
  • the desire to save on;
  • desire to retain customers;
  • the desire not to give an advantage to competitors.

It is difficult to find another way to save cargo and reputation, except for investing additional funds in security measures. All participants agree on this. What type of transport is the most dangerous can be understood based on the analysis of theft. made a rating of criminalization:

  1. Automobile transport.
  2. Railway.
  3. Shipping.
  4. Air transportation.

Transport mode statistics enable law enforcement agencies to improve their security and cargo performance. Transport companies, thanks to statistics, can minimize the risks of transportation and develop logistics. And travel agencies to be confident in the safety of tourist routes.

Every day we cross the road, ride the bus, take off on the plane, and every time we can find ourselves in an emergency. And not all accidents go like in the photo above! What kind of transport is the most dangerous? Let's start from the end.

5th place: Airplane

Airplane is the safest form of public transport. Surprising as it may be, yes - planes crash and die all at once, but they fall extremely rarely, and the death rate is 0.6 people per 160 million kilometers.

4th place: Train

Traveling by train is a little more dangerous. a train travels much slower than an airplane, and a lot of things can happen: a night stop crane, a derailment, a car at a level crossing, and much more. Mortality: 0.9 passengers per 160 million kilometers.

3rd place - water transport

On the water, there are not so much collisions and how many accidental falling out of the deck or falling into a storm. Mortality is: 1.2 people per 160 million kilometers.

2nd place: Car

We all drive cars and buses, and every day there are more and more newcomers to the roads. And in a collision of cars moving towards each other at a speed of 80 km. per hour, the chance of salvation is close to zero. 1.5 car drivers per 160 million kilometers travelled.

1st place: Motorcycle

There is nothing to say here, the statistics about the “crunches” speak for themselves: 42 bikers per 160 million kilometers of the distance traveled.

To understand whether it is so dangerous to fly on airplanes, you should turn to official statistics. In 2013, 31 air crashes were officially registered. It is important to realize that these tragic events happened not only to Russian aircraft, but to the world as a whole, and these flights include cargo transportation, and not just passenger ones.

It is clear that the number of accidents highways significantly higher. Thus, according to official statistics, only in the first half of the year, 62,984 registered traffic accidents occurred on the territory of the Russian Federation, that is, approximately 346 accidents per day.

As for rail transport, the statistics here are less deplorable, but the figures are far from those of aviation. So, only on the Gorky railway in 2013 there were 17 accidents in which 12 people died. Unfortunately no general statistics on railway accidents around the world as a whole, but in some countries, for example, in India, the situation is much worse than in Russia, so it becomes clear that the number of accidents in absolute terms on air transport is much lower than the same figure on highways or railways.

When analyzing disasters, of course, one should take into account the widespread use of cars. But the number of flights per day is quite comparable to the number of trains departing daily from the stations.

The severity of the consequences of the disaster on different modes of transport

As a rule, there are no survivors. However, the same dry statistics suggests that this statement is not entirely true. In 2013, out of 827 people, wrecked 311 people died in road accidents in Russia in six months, 7,801 people died and another 80,330 were injured.

As for railway transport, there is a high death rate in traffic accidents at the crossing, but in most incidents during the movement of the train, people receive moderate injuries and bruises.

About half of air crashes occur during the landing of the aircraft on the ground. Interestingly, about the same proportion of accidents are caused by fatal pilot error.

What type of transport is the least dangerous

Insurance companies help to understand which mode of transport is the least safe, because they constantly study the statistics of accidents on land, in the air and at sea. Interestingly, the lowest tariffs for insurance of goods transported by sea and air transport, that is, the probability of an unfavorable outcome is considered by insurers as lower.

As for passengers, they are insured at a lower percentage for rail transport and during flight by plane. And trips to land transport(private and public) are considered the most risky of all possible types of travel.

Cold statistics and public opinion on the safety of a particular mode of transport are completely opposite. According to the first, air is considered the safest mode of transport, according to the second - air Transport the most unsafe.

Comparison of statistics with public opinion on the issue of safety of a particular mode of transport shows a significant difference. Most of the respondents cannot exactly justify why they chose this particular mode of transport. Statistics in this sense of the word has the most direct justification.

Popular opinion

As an example, it is better to consider the results of a survey conducted in 2006 by the VTsIOM center. According to the survey results, the most unsafe view transport was air transport, and the safest - rail. 84% voted for the first one, 15% for the second one. Water and transport received mixed reviews. So, 44% consider it dangerous and 39% - safe; 50% think automobile transport dangerous and 48% safe.

air transport statistics

According to statistical estimates, which were based on the number of victims in air crashes, aviation turned out to be the safest mode of transport. The second and third place belongs to the water and railway transport, respectively.

The reason why people are afraid of flying is the media that fan the fire from the slightest plane crash. The number of accidents in the air mode of transport is much less than in, but because of their massiveness, the media give them publicity. According to ICAO estimates, there is only one accident per 1 million departures. Thus, the probability of dying in a plane crash is 1/8,000,000. Therefore, it would take a passenger 21,000 years to die.

In relation to survival after air crashes, people have also formed a preconceived notion. To debunk it, just look at the results of statistical processing of 568 aircraft crashes that occurred in the United States between 1983 and 2000. The death toll was 5% of the total. In more serious accidents, such as breaking apart, hitting the ground, and so on, 50% of the passengers turned out to be survivors.

Statistics on road transport

The number of accidents cannot be compared with the number of plane crashes. Statistical processing of road accidents in the Russian Federation for 2009 showed that 26,084 people died and 257,034 were injured in 203,603 road accidents.

The safest mode of transport

Based on the foregoing, it can be safely stated that aerial view transport is the safest on the planet. However, there is another safer transport - space. In the entire history of flights, only 3 spacecraft have crashed.

Sources: