I also wonder about the statistic. I seem to recall it is based on miles travelled, as opposed to number of trips or time spent travelling.
People will take a car for a very short trip, the shortest flights, even in a single engine plane has got to be way more than the shortest car trip. And I would imagine that you could hardly compare the average car trip to the average flight. How do the average number of fatalities per trip compare between flying and driving a car (take out motorcycles).
Same would go for the amount of time travelling, How do the statistics compare when you use fatalities per hour travelled?
I am just wondering.