I don't own stock in Cirrus or Diamond (or Mooney), never flown in any of them, and don't have a dog in this show. But in trying to determine what the differences are between the Diamond DA40 and the Cirrus SR20, I came across some interesting material, starting with this marketing brochure from Cirrus comparing the specs, features, and costs of the two (gosh, can you imagine which came out looking like the better deal?):
http://www.whycirrus.com/compare/pdf/cirrus-vs-diamond-da40-xls.pdf
On the other side of the ledger, we have Diamond touting its safety (click on "Judge for yourself..." link):
http://www.diamondaircraft.com/why/safety.php
Diamond claims either 0.16 (text) or 0.208 (chart) fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours. (A more useful metric than accidents per fleet size.) By comparison, they claim the average GA fatal accident rate is 1.27 per 100,000 hours. Their rate compared to the GA average is quite remarkable. They can thank the quality of their pilot population.
But wait! Here is what Cirrus claims:
http://www.whycirrus.com/safety/cirrus-history.aspx
All Diamond Single Engine (SE) planes are claimed to have twice as many accidents (fatal and non-fatal) per 100,000 hours than Cirrus!
So what about fatal accidents per 100,000 hours? I could not find it there, but this article makes some claims:
http://www.cirruspilots.org/content/SafetyHowSafeIsACirrus.aspx
Cirrus has between 1.42 and 1.76 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours. The article also claims average GA fatal accident rate is about 1.19 per 100,000 hours. Since the period covered by the Diamond stats above and this author are likely different, the average rates would be expected to be similar but not identical (1.27 vs 1.19).
So are there statistics that can tell us something about the Cirrus pilots who had fatal accidents? This article attempts to determine where myth and fact reside:
http://www.cirruspilots.org/content/Safetylessonslearned.aspx
Quoting some highlights:
"Surprisingly, high-time pilots are involved in more than half of the Cirrus fatal accidents. Critics of Cirrus Design often complain about the marketing to newbie pilots, so they expect a rash of accidents involving low-time pilots. Not so."
"About half of the fatal accident pilots had less than 150 hours of experience in an SR2X. Two fatal Cirrus accidents occurred during training, one during transition training and the other during primary training of an experienced helicopter pilot."
- Poor weather decision making:
"Weather is a huge factor in Cirrus accidents [...] Two-thirds of Cirrus fatal accidents involve bad weather (IMC), including low ceilings, fog, icing and thunderstorms."
"My estimation is that 30% of the fatal accidents had a high probability of success if the pilot had pulled the CAPS handle; overall 23 of 41, or 56%, had a high-to-middle level probability of success"