The stats don&#x27;t quite work like that. As others have said the vast majority of fatal accidents are down to some form of either direct pilot error (eg putting the plane into a spin at low altitude) or very poor decision making (eg taking off into severe icing conditions in an airplane not equipped to deal with such conditions).<p>The way I usually explain it is to say that in a car you are much more at the mercy of other drivers. A huge percentage of people killed driving are killed by drivers of other cars. In an airplane nearly all accidents involve only one aircraft. With that, and the fact that so many accidents are pilot indiced the stats for a well trained conservative pilot are far far better than &quot;average.&quot; Good pilots constantly re-train and do things like read NTSB reports to minimize this risk as far as possible.<p>There&#x27;s still a &quot;crap happens&quot; factor (eg catastrophic mechanical failure) that can take down even the best of pilots but nothing in life is completely devoid of &quot;crap happens&quot; risk.