ANYBODY who reads the newspapers regularly could be forgiven for locking and bolting the front door and resolving never to set foot outside again. Trying to get anywhere in this day and age, it seems, is just too fraught with danger.

First there was the Air France Concorde disaster, in which 113 people lost their lives. It led to the grounding of British Airways' entire Concorde fleet. But if airline bosses could have so little faith in the planes that were supposed to be the pride of their fleet, how much faith should we have in the day-to-day workhorses that ferry millions of passengers around the world every year?

Then there was Hatfield. Four people were killed in what was the worst rail disaster in the UK since Ladbroke Grove, almost exactly a year before.

Railtrack boss Gerald Corbett promptly offered his resignation, which was as promptly refused. The company was then given a £4.7 billion 'safety grant' and told to 'spend it wisely'. It will be some time before passengers are convinced rail bosses have done so.

No one needs reminding of just how dangerous our roads are. Every day the papers are filled with an appalling catalogue of deaths and injuries as the result of the latest piece of motoring madness.

As if to ram it home, a new TV series on Channel 5 has chosen to focus on the work of North Yorkshire Police's accident investigation unit, on the grounds the county's roads are, per head of population at least, the most dangerous in the country.

Motorcycling is notoriously dangerous, cyclists are always at the mercy of motorists who may or may not notice them - and even pedestrians can never really know they are safe.

Figures released by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions reveal that after motorcyclists, more pedestrians are killed per billion kilometres travelled than any other form of traveller. Admittedly it's rather a silly statistic, because how often do you walk a billion kilometres? It would get you most of the way to the Sun and back, probably. But it's enough to give you pause for thought.

Finally, just as air passengers were beginning to forget the panic caused by the Concorde disaster comes a 'new' threat: so-called 'Economy Class Syndrome'.

The tragic tale of 28-year-old bride-to-be Emma Christofferson, who collapsed and died from a deep vein thrombosis believed to have been caused by sitting for several hours in cramped economy-class seats on the 12,000-mile flight from Sydney to Heathrow, is enough to put anybody off climbing into an aircraft again, no matter how minimal the actual risk.

So just what is the safest way of getting around? If you've really got to get up and go, should you choose plane, train, automobile - or your own safe pair of feet? Here is our own handy guide to the relative risks of the different ways of getting from A to B.

By car or motorbike

By far the most dangerous form of transport, just about everybody agrees. In 1999, according to the DETR, more than 500 motorcyclists and almost 1,700 car drivers and their passengers were killed on British roads. Another 65 van drivers and 52 lorry drivers died. In North Yorkshire alone, 76 people died on the roads in 1998/99, 80 people last year - and already another 43 have died since April 1 this year.

With the clocks about to go back - meaning dark evenings - and winter rain, ice and snow on the way, things will only get worse. And as if the roads weren't dangerous enough already, motorists in York now have a new hazard to face: the automatic bollard in Stonebow.

The advice given by City of York Council road safety officer Keith Hartland is blunt. "Leave the car in the garage," he said. "That's the only way of making it totally safe."

Keith's advice is, wherever possible, to walk, cycle or go by bus. But if you really have to get the car out, follow some simple safety rules. Don't speed - and that doesn't mean just sticking to speed limits, but also adjusting your speed to the conditions of the road: so go slower if it's wet, dark or icy - don't drink, and if you've got a long journey ahead, take a break. Tiredness can kill.

By train

Despite the horror of tragedies such as Ladbroke Grove and Hatfield, rail transport remains statistically much safer than road travel. In 1999/2000, a total of 33 people travelling on trains were killed: and that includes the 31 who died at Ladbroke Grove. A further 27 people were killed after being hit by moving trains, and five people died in stations.

Railtrack are understandably reluctant to brag about their safety record in the current climate, but a spokesman for GNER said: "The statistics show that rail is safer."

Popular mythology has it that the safest places on a train are the rear carriages - and that it's safest to travel with your back facing the direction in which the train is going: but the spokesman said that as far as he was concerned, there was no truth in this.

By bus

Even though buses use the roads, they are statistically much safer than driving your own car. Just 11 bus or coach passengers died in the UK in 1999: and Brian Asquith, of bus company First York, said that in the four years he had been with the firm he couldn't recall a single fatality on his company's buses.

By plane

Plane crashes make the headlines because they are spectacular and invariably involve major loss of life. But they are also few and far between. The risk is statistically far smaller per mile travelled than probably any other form of transport. A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said that in the nine years from 1989 to 1998, UK airlines carried a total of 700 million passengers, and just 56 people had been killed. Perhaps Dustin Hoffman's autistic character in the film Rain Man didn't need to remember that Quantas was the only airline not to have had a fatal accident after all.

Ironically, it was Quantas that was involved in the sad case of Emma Christoffersen. The CAA spokesman suggested that if passengers had any health worries about flying, they should consult their GP.

York GP Dr Manuela Fontebasso stressed that the health risks of flying were minimal. But if passengers had a family or personal history of thrombosis or pulmonary embolism, if they were on a combined contraceptive pill, or were heavy smokers, it would be worth having a chat with their GP first.

Other than that, passengers should try to avoid alcohol, and should try to drink lots of water to avoid the risk of dehydration, she said. Getting up to stretch regularly, or even doing simple flexing exercises with the feet and ankles, could help to reduce further the already tiny risk of a thrombosis.