Training for a pilot certificate is much more rigorous than it is for a driver's license. Mandatory ground and flight training, along with written and practical tests, help to ensure that pilots have achieved a basic level of proficiency. Periodic recurrent training helps to maintain and improve skills. The environment in which aircraft operate is much more closely regulated, as well. The regulations have evolved over the years to address accident prevention, and most pilots prefer to use regulations as a minimum guideline to exceed in their own flight operations.
Perfect safety is unknown in transportation and probably in most of life's endeavors.
Our expectations have been based largely on the airline safety record. By almost any measure, commercial air travel is probably the safest mode of transportation. This is because of the tremendous emphasis that is placed on the reliability of aircraft, air crews, and the air traffic control system in which they operate. General aviation uses many of the same procedures as the airlines to achieve a good safety record. It is not quite as good as the airlines' record for some of the same reasons that pleasure boating is not as safe as traveling on an ocean liner.