I don't find per mile all that useful when comparing modes of transportation for safety, because for some modes of transportation the risk of a trip doesn't really depend much on the distance.
To give an extreme example, imagine someone starts passenger service from Earth to some planet in the Andromeda galaxy. Each flight carries 100 people. Once the warp field is stabilized the rest of the trip is 100% safe. However when the warp field is turned on their is a 99% chance that it will collapse rather than stabilize, which will destroy the ship and kill everyone aboard.
These Andromeda flights are 5 orders of magnitude safer than commercial air travel when measures by passenger fatalities per mile.
Overall yes, but they do present non trivial medical risks for some people.
Similarly, the risks for specific drivers in specific vehicles making specific trips isn’t the same as the risks for the average driver making an arbitrary trip.
To have an equivalent fatality rate per passenger-mile, you'd need about 7,500 commercial aviation fatalities in the US per year (two and a half 9/11s, ~60 fully loaded 737s).
Per hour would be lower of course, maybe 1/10th as many just judging by "cruise speed." I couldn't find good hour-wise data.
I trust the competency of a professional pilot over my driving capabilities, even though the most serious incident I've ever had in 25 years of driving is a parking ticket.
Add in all of the _other_ drivers on the road (compared to professional pilots in controlled spaces), and it's not even close.
You don't have agency over other drivers on the road and they might cause an accident without any fault of yours. That issue is (almost) entirely avoided by planes.
But importantly, I have the ability to see and react and avoid the collision. On the plane, I have the ability to eat lunch. Surely this could be considered a difference in agency.
I can't argue that you have more agency in a personal vehicle. Agency and safety are not directly correlated, though: in fact, I'd argue that for transportation, they're often inversely related.
