It is kind of comical how every airplane accident is thoroughly investigated and systemic changes immediately proposed and implemented, while mothers of dead children have to petition for a stop sign. And I don’t mean airliners, I mean people in their little 2-4 seater Cessnas who took off when it was clear and couldn’t find the runway when the weather changed.
Then I remember that everyone in those little planes are really rich and it all makes sense.
Could be related to the fact that life insurance companies typically pay out like 4x for common carrier deaths (e.g. planes, buses, trains, roller coasters)
Yup, and what sounds crazy, when those thourough investigations happen the investigators focuse on what “external factors” could have lead to the crash. Not automatically assuming pilot error/fault or negligence right away.
Once those factors are found, systemic changes are immediately proposed and implemented as you noted. Which leads to that same error not being repeated once again.
The path to safe infrastructure is usually not just “remove all barriers” but instead “control the flow of traffic”
For example when a car hits a building, which happens pretty much daily in North America, it’s automatically “driver fault”. No changes are implemented to the area, nothing restricting another car or vehicle from hitting the exact same building again. No “barriers” implemented to control the flow of traffic.
European countries on the otherhand, when collisions happen the investigation generally leans more towards what caused the driver to collide with something. Not automatically assuming the driver intentionally collide with something.
A lot of those changes involved restricting who can get a pilot’s license in the first place.
If you have an unresolved mental illness, or had an unexplained loss of consciousness ever in your life, you can’t become a pilot. You also go through a 6 to 14 month course focusing mostly on planning and managing personal risk to get your license.
If we had a similar amount of education and alternative options for getting places without driving, it works make sense to stop automatically assuming the driver was tired or otherwise at fault.
I wouldn’t say the NTSB thoroughly investigates every small GA crash. There are quite a few where the they don’t even go to the crash site and just do it via phone interview. They’ll send investigators out when there’s something to learn that might affect airworthiness of the other existing aircraft of the same make & model. But if it’s fairly apparent that the pilot just fucked up, they often don’t send investigators out.
But if it’s fairly apparent that the pilot just fucked up, they often don’t send investigators out.
Yeah but then there’s investigation whether something could be done to reduce the chance of that specific fuckup
And then they issue a recommendation which goes into the FAA’s backlog that is thousands long.
I think the illusion of control is a factor. People largely feel in control of their own fate behind the wheel, whereas on a plane you must completely surrender control and trust others to be competent.
I also think most people assume a plane crash will always be a deadly event whereas a car crash is a minor inconvenience that is sometimes fatal.
a plane crash will always be a deadly event
Tends to be in the 90% deadly range…
Imagine if about 5% of drivers stopped driving because of 1 car crash. That would rile up the auto and oil industries.
because it affects richer people.
plames are very safe tho
Specifically as a result of intense, continuous regulation and oversight. it falls apart fast without that. That’s the whole subtext of the meme. If you needed 10,000 training hours, were subject to regular drug and mental health testing, required to do continuous maintenance after every drive by a trained support crew, and had to submit a trip plan to a federal authority before every time you got behind the wheel I’m fairly certain cars would have a plane-like safety record too.
Cars are closer to general aviation than commercial though, and GA planes crash all the damn time because of pilots doing stupid things or not maintaining their equipment.
An airliner would be closer to maybe a coach bus where the driver does go through additional training and scrutiny and the equipment is maintained by a specialized crew. Coach buses have a much lower fatality rate than passenger cars.
Or rather if cars were subject to FAA-like regulation, most automotive car travel would be bus travel. And a few rich idiots could take their own lives in their hands in their personal
CessnasCivics.
Organizations like the NHTSA actually do study car accidents and safety. There’s a problem of scale though. There are so many more car accidents than plane crashes that studying them thoroughly in an individual manner becomes impossible.
But investigations do happen, especially when trends evolve. Hence all the various improvements to car safety over the decades. There’s been a significant reduction in automobile related casualties per distance driven over the history of the technology. Think things like crumple zones and seatbelts, and more recently automatic braking.
Yet deaths are up, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. Per distance driven is the wrong metric anyway since more highway miles makes the system appear safer than it actually is. Plus automakers and regulators prioritize occupant safety, not actual absolute safety. And traffic “engineers” optimize travel time while ignoring things like induced demand. The regulators (US focus) are an absolute joke whem it comes to safety, as the multitude of gigantic pickup trucks and SUVs and the dogshit infrastructure clearly show.
