Private, personal aircraft usage by licensed operators, like how cars are owned and used, generally falls into the general aviation bucket. At 1.5 fatalities per 100,000 flight hours [2] that is less safe than cars per distance unless the average flight speed is ~1000 mph, or around mach 1.3 (it is not, it is probably 1/3-1/5 that). That is despite the vastly greater training required for a pilot’s license.
[1] https://www.iaopa.eu/what-is-general-aviation
[2] https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20211117.as...
You confusing typical humble car owner with certified plane owner.
Automobiles could for years don't see any care, even could be used without insurance, but still considered in statistics.
Planes of general aviation, are closer to city buses, which are under constant care and have very good support.
And yes, exist planes without rules, but this is difference, nobody care about non-certified automobile on private land, but you will lost pilot license if you'll get caught flying on non-certified plane, except very few special cases.
Also you should be careful, when compare statistics of US and EU, they have significant differences.
As you note, car owners are vastly less careful than certified plane owners and pilots, and yet the basically untrained car owners are 3-5x safer driving. As this thread was about enabling private flight vehicles for "everybody", it is clear that private flight vehicles are nowhere near safe enough for "everybody" if even the comparatively highly-trained certified plane owner is much less safe than a basically untrained car owner since private flight vehicles for "everybody" would undoubtedly be operated by basically untrained flying car owners making the danger even more pronounced than a mere 3-5x.
I EXACTLY stated: IN USA, aviation safety few times worse than in EU. But when you consider pure numbers, you should understand, that in EU totally different distribution of planes sizes and of airfield sizes. Sure, Frankfurt is safer than ground field somewhere in Austrian Alps, and number of small airfields in USA far exceed any other country.
On first page of google search: probability of accident on road "for every 1000 miles driven, your chances of getting into a crash are 1 in 366. Insurance companies report that customers file a claim once every 17.9 years"
"Approximately 1.19 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes." "Between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many incurring a disability" https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...
For planes: "about .01 deaths per 100,000 departures from 225 accidents between 2013 and 2021" “The industry 2022 fatality risk of 0.11 means that on average, a person would need to take a flight every day for 25,214 years to experience a 100% fatal accident,” stated the I.A.T.A. https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/how-common-are-commercial-pl...
To achieve reliability mostly used two approaches - more strict regulations on design and production (one cannot sale unsafe plane), and same with maintenance.
Some countries going even farther then others, for example, all Soviet helicopters required to have at least two engines and to make safe landing on only one.
Also, for aviation regulators typical to sacrifice modern hype technologies and be extremely conservative on electronics and software, so planes still achievable but reliable (yes, I don't like npm, I think planes will be hundreds times more dangerous if use npm).