right after the SAS crashes they came out with a news article about the safety of the q400. It was a european paper but they looked up the amount of hull loss accidents vs the total # of q400 flying around at the time. Something like 16 had suffered hull loss accidents out of 160 airframes.

I know the Q is supposedly a solid airplane and i would fly on one without hesitation but from the outside (publics perspective) looking in the airplane looks like a POS and has a spotty at best safety record. Every airplane has enormous lists of problems that are either fixed or deferred... show that list to someone who doesnt know a lot about planes and it looks bad.