For those who avoid thinking by citing traffic fatalities. I calculated the deaths per passenger mile traveled in the USA; .000000015. That's 7 zeroes to the left of the decimal point. That's because cars in America rack up miles in the trillions. Everybody seems so impressed at the level of activity in the sky. But we have about 250-300 million cars in America. The majority do trips daily. Lots of trips and miles like you can't believe. Air travel is an exceptional thing, surface travel is the rule. 43 thousand fatalies are pretty exceptional when you multiply 365 days times hundreds of millions of miles every day.