Every year there are between 600 and 700 recorded deaths from recreational boating alone (not counting industrial or military accidents) [1]. No matter how safe we make it, there will always be accidents, and those accidents will kill people.

[1] http://www.uscgboating.org/statistics/accident_statistics.as...

Nothing is perfectly safe, but if you could make space travel as safe as boating then I'd say heliodor was correct.

Exactly. The air was once dangerous as well. Now there is negligible risk to travel almost anywhere in the world within 24 hours.

The most dangerous occupation in America, by fatalities, is fisherman. Yah, it's safer than it was in the past, but I wouldn't call it "safe", when compared to sitting in front of your computer.

I think the families of the tens of thousands of people killed in the Japanese Tsunami last year would disagree.

Yes, one day space will hurl us an asteroid and we'll be doomed.

My point was regarding transportation through a given medium.

Still it's undeniable that progress has been made. It's incremental and there are trade-offs, in the future we could have protective domes spanning entire cities that would withstand that amount of pressure for eg.