Airline industry representatives have recently argued that flying is safer than driving citing two separate studies First U S statistics show that each year there are approximately 40 000 deaths in automobile accidents versus only approximately 200 in fli

The author provides two pieces of evidence to support the Airline industry representatives’ contention to flying is safer than driving. The result of the study cannot be disputed – we must accept as true, for example, the deaths in automobile accidents are more comapred to that of the flight accidents. We might, however, question if the the study is large enough or representative enough. While the representatives argument presents the hypothesis of one possibilities, there might be more possiblities than just the one of the representatives.

The leap to the argument here is that the proportion of deaths in land transportation vehicles are higher than the air transportation vehicles. No evidence is presented to support this supposition. The representatives might have to determine why people still prefer to travel in the cars or trains rather than in flight. This might open up the reasons why people prefer going in land vehicles rather than in air vehicles. Moreover, number of people met with accidents in one flight accidents can be more than that of one car accidents, as ample number of people can travel in flights, however, only few of arounf 20 people can travel in car.

The data provided is lacking the depth of the details which would help to evaluate the study results. How many airlines companies were surveyed and studied before coming to this conclusion? What is the margin or error and how was the study conducted? If the data presented is statistically significant and suffiently representative, then this can strengthen the argument that the automobile accidents are higher than that on the flight accidents. For example, if multiple airline companies were examined with the accidents happened in multiple cities, this would bolster to strengthen the arguement. If alternatively, few airline companies have been surveyed and less number of incidents of flight and automobile accidents have been considered,for example, if only one airline company’s accidents were considered and equated that with the number of land accidents in only one city were to be considered, then this might weaken the argument. then this might lead to expect the varience in the conclusion.

Finally, the author mentions that the pilots are four times less likely to have accidents than that of the average of road accidents. Experiencing accidents is not the only means of non safety incidents. How many flights have been hijakced so far? How many people have been killed during these incidents apart from the plane crash incidents? What is the ratio of such events happening in airlines and with the automobile vehicles? Solutions to these questions matter a lot for declaring the safest vehicle for people.

While the argument has an interesting hypothesis, the data presented are not strong enought to determine the validity of the conclusion. First, at the basic level, we need to know if the data provided are statistically significant and suffieciently representative. There are several logical gaps, assertions made on the insuffient evidences. Finally, the representatives should examine and dismiss the other possible scenarios that might lack the safety of people in these two vehicles which would help them determine the validity of the conclusion.