Air or Land?

Essay by in_the_laneHigh School, 12th gradeA+, May 2003

download word file, 3 pages 4.4 1 reviews

Air or Land?

In today's society traveling is apart of every American's life. Driving and flying are the two most used modes of transportation. Although driving is a regular routine for most people, it is not the safest means of transportation. Flying is the safest and best means of transportation in America.

To conclude that flying is safer than driving, I have gathered a few statistics and quotes. The risk of being involved in a commercial aircraft accident is one in three million. The number of United States highway deaths in a typical six-month span is about twenty-one thousand people, which approximately equals all commercial jet fatalities worldwide since the beginning of commercial flights four decades ago. To be precise, fewer people have died in commercial airplane crashes in America over the past sixty years than are killed in United States auto accidents in a typical three-month period. According to Dr.

Barnett of MIT, "Air travel is the safest mode of mass transportation." The mass majority of American's that have flown prefer flying over driving. As to the statistics and quotes, flying is safer than driving.

The effects of flying verses driving are phenomenal. In the United States it is twenty-two times safer to fly than to drive, which means that the risk of dying in a plane crash is one in three billion. Nevertheless, two out of seven people will die in a car accident. If traveling long distance, the cost of airplane tickets or traveling by car could cause diversity. Plane ticket costs have dropped significantly for transcontinental fights. A round trip ticket for one person from Mobile Regional Airport to Baltimore-Washington International is roughly two hundred and fifty dollars. The trip takes around four to five hours. If you were traveling by car it is a twenty...