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Why you've never been in a plane crash

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Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#271

Post by robben1234 »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #246
nayuki wrote: post #199

Great article. I agree a lot with the safety culture in commercial aviation and the commitment to investigate and fix root causes. Now can we please apply the same standards to car crashes? The same human errors and bad infrastructure keep getting repeated over and over again. And the problems are getting worse, with SUVs and distracted driving on the rise. See https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/ for a community that…

There are a lot of factors that really complicate this system. Enforcement focuses on the wrong parameters. Police love to remind us that, "Speed is always a factor." Well, it's certainly the most easily measured one. The trouble is, what speed is wrong ? Is it the 5 cars who want to drive 90mph on the freeway, or the 2 cars who want to drive 65 in both lanes? By obsessively enforcing speed limits, police have manage…

>The trouble is, what speed is wrong?

I don't really agree that this is the "trouble". Any competent transit-related professional knows what type of driving is wrong. Even American cops know [0] that in terms of traffic the key thing is to not impede traffic and target dangerous driving.

However, hunting school zone speeders, left lane hoggers and traffic weavers will never generate as much revenue as using an automatic machine that points at cars going faster than arbitrary number.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn6C6ZkBdb0

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#272

Post by nayuki »

mattrick wrote: post #268
ssl232 wrote: post #12

One of the most important pieces of legislation in the UK that helped improve safety in workplaces was the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, which placed a duty of care on organisations to look after the wellbeing of their staff. One of the tenets is to take near misses seriously. According to a health and safety engineer in a course I attended, near misses are like gifts from the heavens, as they show you exactly…

I've been obsessed with the US Chemical Safety Board videos on YouTube that describe in great detail the events that lead up to industrial accidents. One of the common themes I've seen among them is that there's usually some sort of warning sign or near miss that goes ignored by the people responsible for them since they don't cause any major damage. Then a few days or months later that system fails in an entirely pr…

Yeah, shoutouts to the USCSB channel; I've been watching them for years. https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB/videos

Back to aviation, I can recommend these channels that explain air accidents: https://www.youtube.com/@MentourPilot/videos , https://www.youtube.com/@MiniAirCrashInvestigation/videos , https://www.youtube.com/@AirSafetyInstitute/videos

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#273

Post by fennecbutt »

nayuki wrote: post #199

Great article. I agree a lot with the safety culture in commercial aviation and the commitment to investigate and fix root causes. Now can we please apply the same standards to car crashes? The same human errors and bad infrastructure keep getting repeated over and over again. And the problems are getting worse, with SUVs and distracted driving on the rise. See https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/ for a community that…

Cars? Hahaha. I feel like the difference is:

Planes: sometimes pilot error, often mechanical/maintenance. Almost never because the pilot is flying like a wanker.

Cars: sometimes driver error/inexperience, sometimes mechanical/maintenance, almost always because the driver is driving like a wanker.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#275

Post by GenerocUsername »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #236
chmod600 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_... TIL that car fatalities were declining until 2019, and then reversed and are getting worse. What happened in the last five years? Safety features of the cars themselves are improving (emergency braking). Alcohol may be a factor, but why in the last five years? Cars have been big for a while. WFH probably reduced commuting time. Other countries appear to…

Uber became more expensive, meaning its reduction in DUIs had ended? It is much more likely we hit a plateau in improvement and now we are just fluctuating around an equilibrium.

I believe this.

From 2013-2020 I used to Uber 6-10 times a year.

From 2020-2024 I have ubered 2 times due to the price being way higher.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#276

Post by rainsford »

P_I_Staker wrote: post #235
nayuki wrote: post #199

Great article. I agree a lot with the safety culture in commercial aviation and the commitment to investigate and fix root causes. Now can we please apply the same standards to car crashes? The same human errors and bad infrastructure keep getting repeated over and over again. And the problems are getting worse, with SUVs and distracted driving on the rise. See https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/ for a community that…

Unpopular opinion, but the truth: We have to drive and it's a right. I agree about the infrastructure issues. Still the modern "safe driving" mentality that people want is at odds with that REALITY. This could change with public transit, however we don't do this. Even the best countries fall short, and most don't get close. It's actively discouraged in the USA. Actually, you could argue that people already have to de…

At least in the US I can see a reasonable argument for most people needing to drive, but it's much less obvious people need to drive the vehicles they do the way that they do to meet basic transportation requirements. One obvious if almost certainly unpopular solution would be to have the basic drivers license you get now with essentially no effort only cover small speed limited cars that would pose far less risk to everyone else on the road. If you want or need something larger or faster, require a separate license with testing, experience, and re-certification requirements in-line with the extra responsibility operating such a vehicle should involve. You abuse that even a little, back to a GPS speed limited Corolla hatchback you go.

This addresses the issue with a lack of driving alternative while also addressing the cases where people need more than basic transportation. But I guarantee people would lose their minds and start setting fire to their local DMV if such a change were even theoretically proposed. Because the problem with car culture in the US (and elsewhere) isn't that driving is a necessity, it's that being a driver comes with such a massive sense of unearned entitlement that any restrictions at all for any reason are treated as a massive violation of God given rights. Even attempts to enforce existing laws are met with absurd levels of hostility, like the opposition to red light or speed cameras.

I say this as someone who likes driving and likes cars, but as someone who is also a private pilot, the reason we don't have a driving safety culture like we have a flying safety culture is that the absolute worst possible example of an unsafe pilot you could imagine is basically the average driver. And not only is that driving behavior accepted in a way it never would be in the aviation community, but it's treated as an unassailable right.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#277

Post by NoPicklez »

npteljes wrote: post #215
ylhert wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cognitive dissonance people have around this issue is astonishing. We are willing to ground the 737MAX fleet when a few people get a (surely terrifying) open air flying experience; but 44,000 people are killed on the road in the US _every_ year (and rising!) and very few people seem to care. In most age cohorts, death by car is the largest killer. In the US you have a 1 in 107 chance of dying in a car crash in yo…

I too have thought a lot about this cognitive dissonance. I think that there are several differences to the two issues, and so, in people's attitude towards it too. One, I think, is that flying is something that is being done to us, and driving is something that we do ourselves. So the agency, the point of view is very different. Something bad happening while being passive is much more horrifying because of the power…

I agree with this a lot.

I think the dissonance is surely curbed when sitting in a plane at cruising altitude realising that I am much more worried if these engines break down as opposed to my car, as I am likely to fall out of the sky.

Planes if broken down fall from the sky. Cars that breakdown don't. The people operating the plane are well trained, any tom dick and harry can drive a car without any check on their mental and physical state before they hop behind the wheel.

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#278

Post by cdelsolar »

moring wrote: post #8

Related: CAST analysis http://sunnyday.mit.edu/CAST-Handbook.pdf Intended to focus on maximal learning about all factors that contributed to an accident. It subsumes several approaches, including a blameless analysis and that each factor doesn't just have a single "cause" but that different factors form a network of interaction. Also nitpicking about the headline: You haven't been in a place crash because you wouldn'…

2/3 of people in plane crashes survive

Re: Why you've never been in a plane crash

#279

Post by hayst4ck »

ta1243 wrote: post #193
teolandon wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't scale linearly.

Indeed, so arguing that if revenue is 24m a day that a 1 hour outage loses 1m is wrong

Arguing it is $1,000,000.00 is wrong.

Arguing that it represents the order of magnitude of potential damage is cogent.

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