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There are no guarentees in life and there is risk in every activity we engage in.
This story reminds me of how John Denver died. He was a competent pilot and he was flying on a day with good weather but he made a simple mistake of not having enough gas in the tank he was using. But that mistake wasn't enough to kill him. The guy who built his Long EZ decided he was smarter than the guy who designed it, Burt Rutan.
Rutan put the fuel switch valve in between the pilot's legs so it could be easy to get to. The builder clown put the valve behind the pilot and over his shoulder (left?). The valve was sticky and needed a vice grip to move.
So Denver took the plane up for a spin without ensuring he had enough fuel in the tank he was running on and he didn't know the fuel valve had a problem.
Avaition accidents like these are almost always caused by a chain of errors. If one of the links is broken then the accident doesn't happen and we never hear about it. We only hear about the accidents that do happen and not the near misses.
I don't worry about these things. I don't fly anymore because flying is a huge pain in the butt. The planning and reservations required, the dealing with airports and now there is COVID.
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