If you need to travel right now, you might be a little nervous. There are legitimate reasons to stay at home at the moment. Still, sometimes you have to be somewhere, and there’s no alternative.
Perhaps you have to travel for work, or maybe you want to see a relative you haven’t visited in a while. In either case, flying or driving are the two most obvious options.
However, which one is safer, both in general and at this moment? We’ll break down some possible negatives with both, as well as some positives.
Driving Dangers
Let’s start with some reasons driving can be dangerous. The first immediately evident driving problem is accidents. Car accidents occur:
Much more often than plane accidents
Due to reckless driving, drunk driving, distracted driving, etc.
The chances you will be in a plane accident are minuscule compared to your chances of getting in a car accident, which are relatively high. For instance, in Texas, in 2018, car accidents injured 249,241 people.
When you are on the road, there are always people around you who aren’t paying as much attention to their surroundings as they ought to be. They might be yelling at their kids in the backseat, trying to change the satellite radio station, or arguing with someone via Bluetooth.
You should certainly think about these things before you decide to take a cross-country road trip.
Flying Dangers
Covid-19 has to be the biggest flying danger right now. All airlines do require:
Social distancing
That you wear a mask
They’re doing everything they can, providing hand sanitizer, spraying down the seats with disinfectant before each new flight, etc.
However, these are not foolproof strategies. The problem with flying and an airborne contagion like the coronavirus is that the air is recirculating constantly when you’re on an airplane.
If someone coughs, then it’s in the air. All it takes is you lowering the mask from your nose or mouth for a couple of seconds, and you could breathe it in.
Also, plane accidents do occur. They don’t happen as frequently as car accidents, but if something goes wrong, you could plummet thousands of feet out of the sky. The chances of surviving a plane accident are not very high, whereas, with a car crash, you’re much more likely to walk away from it.
Driving Advantages
There are some driving advantages worth mentioning. The biggest one is that if you’re safely in your vehicle, you don’t have to worry about the pandemic. If there’s no one in there with you or just your family members, you don’t have to fret about mask-wearing, social distancing, etc.
You can also take your time getting to where you need to be. You can stop whenever you’d like, get a meal, grab a snack, or see some sights. You’re much more in control of what’s happening than you are with flying.
Flying Advantages
The most significant flying advantage is that you get to where you’re going so much quicker. If you live in New York, and your job wants you to go to California for a meeting, if you drive, it will take you multiple days. If you fly, despite the possible Covid-19 dangers, you can be there in just a few hours.
Also, if you fly often, you can enjoy things like Delta Skyclubs and other airport amenities. Some of them are very chic, with meals, snacks, fully-stocked bars, and many TVs to watch the news or sports while you wait for your flight.
If you’re flying for business, you can also enjoy first class, which has some amenities as well. If you feel like you can keep your mask on and risk the current situation, it’s a pretty good way to spend a day.
Which one you ultimately choose depends on many factors. You have to consider how urgently you need to get where you’re going. If you’re seeing a dying relative, for instance, then that might be reason enough to brave a flight.
If there’s no urgency getting to your destination, you might feel safer driving, at least until there is a vaccine. Medical science is working on many of them right now, and hopefully, there will be a viable one before too much longer.
Travel looks much different this year than it usually does, but that shouldn’t last forever. In time, people will feel safe flying again, and you won’t have to consider some of these factors.
