Whether better infrastructure, or more currency, as on average pilots in the USA fly more, or the FAA regulatory environment, or higher proportion of training hours – difficult to disentangle why on average GA is safer in the USA.
Part 121 CAT is certainly the world standard and in the context of very low CAT fatality rates in Europe and USA, the fact that Part 121 is two or three times safer might get lost in the statistics.
In any event Poissonic (and Poisson was French working on a Prussian problem) curves are more relevant than average statistics.
@RobertL18C my education is obviously lacking. I do not understand your reference to Poissonic.
The USA NTSB published a report that both the annual GA accident and the fatality rate in Alaska alone was pretty much the same as the whole of Europe.
That statistic is just that a statistic to be used as anyone sees fit. It does not mean that Europe is a safer place to fly or that its pilots are better trained or that currency makes no difference.
Just that Alaska is a pretty hostile environment in which to fly. Further research would I guess show that perhaps many more hours are flown by private pilots in the USA (maybe in Alaska alone) than in the whole of Europe.
Did the UK CAA really want to keep the IMC rating?
The Q is “what is the CAA”?
In any national CAA you get different factions, positioning themselves for power. In the UK CAA, you have
The above are caricatures but I know you get my drift because these types are everywhere 
It is the same with the N-reg scene. Parts of the CAA have always supported it (formally, stating they have no view one way or the other) while other parts, and notably the DfT (the ministry which owns the CAA) has at times been hostile.
But it seems UK pilots want to hang onto it at all costs and that’s okay providing they don’t expect the other NAA’s that make up the EASA decision making group to roll over and just accept the UK rating for flying IFR in their airspace.
I am not aware of anybody ever suggesting that the IMCR should be expanded outside the UK. Anybody who knows how aviation works will know this cannot happen because the privileges it has (in the UK) would make it an IR in all but name, in most of Europe, which is politically impossible. All that UK pilots ever wanted was to keep the IMCR. I was very involved in this area back then… and have held the IMCR since 2002.
EASA’s anti IMCR position is no different to Brussels saying that [insert your favourite ski destination] has the benefit of superior mountain terrain and is thus unfairly competing on the EU scene in ski tourism. Therefore the mountains in question must be closed to visitors, or levelled so only green runs are possible (an interesting civil engineering proposition). I am all in favour of standardisation (Eric Sivel’s frequent words) but not if it removes extra stuff which is currently available in a given country. After all, Brussels was unable to stop the world-class tourist attraction called bullfighting (“politics is the art of the possible” was one politician’s explanation in a TV interview) 
Airspace issues and ATC services are little to do with the IMC Rating… well except that virtually all flying on the IMCR gets the same service as flying “VFR” and just happening to be in cloud. In terms of UK CAS, the IMCR is good only for the occassional IFR transit of a bit of Class D. It also legitimises flying an IAP, in D or G, in non VFR conditions.
many more hours are flown by private pilots in the USA (maybe in Alaska alone) than in the whole of Europe.
Posted here previously… the US is 5x to 10x more annual hours in GA than all of Europe.
http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/smcPoisson_distributions.html
Google tells me it was not Poisson himself that worked on the Prussian death by horse kicks classic problem, but Ladislaus Bortkiewicz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladislaus_Bortkiewicz
The use of simple averages may mask the real probability of an accident.
It also is an amusing bit of nominative determinism that the Poissonic curve can be ‘fish tail’ like!
I fear that both EASA and the FAA have suffered to a certain extent to regulatory capture by the industries they were designed to regulate.
RobertL18C wrote:
The use of simple averages may mask the real probability of an accident.
There are two topical and relevant examples of this phenomenon at work.
1. The relevant statistics say that the average risk of death if someone in my age range contracts Covid-19 is X% where X is a very small number. However that is a crude average across the entire group of people aged 30-39 in the UK, and does not take into account that almost all the risk in that set of the population is held by those 30-39 year olds who are extremely unwell with pre-existing comorbidities. Thus my actual risk, personally, is some very small tiny fraction of X.
2. It seems that statistically flying GA is about as safe as riding a motorcycle. However, the vast majority of GA accidents are pilot error of some sort whereas a lot of motorcyclists are killed when hit by cars in accidents that they could do little to prevent. The message here being that in flying GA the hand of fate is less likely to intervene – if you can plan and execute carefully to avoid screwing up then your risk decreases enormously. I have probably not described this at all well.
Averages are useful guidance but do not create individual experience, or even close. For example, forty six injury free years of regular motorcycling in Europe and the US says to me that fate is less important in that activity than skill, experience and using your head individually. Saying accidents happen regardless is 95% nonsense in my experience, only a tiny fraction of injuries are actually beyond your control.
Flying for me is certainly more dangerous than motorcycling simply because I’m not as skilled or experienced in it, despite having flown a bit for a long time I’m simply not at the same level. I’ve flown with a number of people who have vast experience flying all kinds of planes in all kinds of situations and you can’t fake that, or train to that level, all you can do is fly within your own limitations – which is incidentally how I got through the first 10-15 years of motorcycling without issue.
LFHNflightstudent Your post. #6
The FAA, who were eulogised by Jacko, have no responsibility for UK Airspace.
Silvaire wrote:
Flying for me is certainly more dangerous than motorcycling
I guess individual experiences vary.
I rode a motorcycle regularly for about 2 years, albeit it mostly in London, and stopped because basically too many people seemed to be trying to kill me.
In an aeroplane the chances of someone else killing me (i.e. a midair) are so remote as to hardly be worth considering – that’s why I consider the activity inherently safer for me.
Silvaire wrote:
For example, forty six injury free years of regular motorcycling in Europe and the US says to me that fate is less important in that activity than skill, experience and using your head individually.
Well – forty six days of a great life with “all you can eat buffet” every day says to the turkey mid September that the paradise really exists…
Even more data driven: About 2/3 of German car drivers believe that their driving skills are above average (with the vast majority of the other 1/3 seeing themselves at average and only very few below average) and therefore accident statistics do not apply to them.
Malibuflyer wrote:
About 2/3 of German car drivers believe that their driving skills are above average
Average that over european countries I can believe it. It just depends who the individuals are comparing their average to.
