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It’s also higher variance. When a plane goes down, it’s often the case that everyone on board dies. Traffic collisions can sometimes lead to multi-vehicle pileu
by chongli 6y ago
It’s also higher variance. When a plane goes down, it’s often the case that everyone on board dies. Traffic collisions can sometimes lead to multi-vehicle pileups but they’re unlikely to cause hundreds of deaths all at once like a plane crash.
- sbierwagen 6y ago>it’s often the case that everyone on board dies. But not always, interestingly enough. The lede mentions the Tenerife disaster, which had 61 survivors out of 644, and Avianca Flight 52, which had 85 survivors out of 158. Most accidents occur during takeoff and landing, when altitude and relative velocity are low. Disasters caused by pure incompetence, like when the pilot of Air France 447 flew a fully functional plane into the Atlantic, are rare. So rare that the United States hasn't had a fatal crash of an airliner since 2009.
- remram 6y agoI don't know if I would refer to that as "variance" in the safety. A person can only die once, which puts a hard upper-bound on that. Variance in the death rate of events, maybe.