4 ms·
I’m not sure if I care about people’s intuition on this. Measuring by hour is plainly stupid. If people really do evaluate it that way, it’s an interesting bit
by mikeash 7y ago
I’m not sure if I care about people’s intuition on this. Measuring by hour is plainly stupid. If people really do evaluate it that way, it’s an interesting bit of psychology, but irrelevant to actual safety.
- mercutio2 7y agoHmm. I wouldn’t quite go as far as stupid. The argument is that humans, in the aggregate, don’t choose trips exclusively based on passenger miles; they (often, though not always) think about how many hours they’re willing to devote to travel. If cheap air travel availability as a mode induces people to travel 10x more passenger miles, in a world where airlines were only as safe per passenger mile as cars, there would be a net reduction in public health. But we don’t live in that world; planes are better in safety when measuring by passenger hour than cars, so in fact we’ve improved public health.