The headline above is one you are unlikely to see in a newspaper. It's not news. However, the 685 fatalities in 18 accidents were news - because they are so infrequent.

The tragic thing is that giving air and rail accidents undue prominence in the press gives people a distorted idea of how safe those modes actually are, certainly by comparison with road.

I do wonder how many road accidents and fatalities the media are responsible for by their practice of endlessly reporting on rail accidents and thereby telling people railways are "unsafe", for example.

I also deplore the practice of reporting level crossing crashes as "Train wrecks" or "Rail accidents". In 99.9% of cases - at least - the train was the innocent victim: it was the car driver who was responsible, by misuse of the crossing.

The figures above - 685 fatalities, 90 accidents to all aircraft types, are for 2009: for 2008, the figures were 502 and 109.

In the UK, rail accidents seem to be getting more destructive - usually because of the high closing speed of trains in collision. (And, please note, railway privatisation had no impact on the steadily downward trend in UK rail accidents: Andrew Evans has comprehensively researched this). Presumably as aircraft sizes increase, we'll see the same kind of effect - fatalities/accident are likely to increase.

But rail and air are exceptionally safe ways to travel!