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It's absolutely a problem, and it needs to be fixed, and Boeing should be punished for letting it get this far. But it's not worth disrupting flight plans to ve

It's absolutely a problem, and it needs to be fixed, and Boeing should be punished for letting it get this far. But it's not worth disrupting flight plans to very, very, very slightly improve the safety of a mode of travel that is already like seven orders of magnitude safer than driving, which most of us do every day.

rvnx 2y ago
just for info, for planes it depends, for daily short-distances (aka, because of the "per trip" risk), they are actually more dangerous than a car. It's true for long-distances, but not for short.
- coldpie 2y ago
  Interesting. Do you have a source for that? Does that include people crashing privately owned airplanes (which I don't think are relevant to this conversation)?
  - rvnx 2y ago
    Yes, you can compare figures here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_accident But it's anecdotal, I mean, realistically, the plane is still better for long distance. You can sort by journeys, vs, km.
    - coldpie 2y ago
      That seems to be sourced from a plain HTML page from 2001, reporting stats limited to the UK through the year 2000[1]. I guess it's not implausible, but it doesn't seem to line up with these more up to date US-based stats[2] where airline deaths are so close to 0 that it's hard to form a meaningful ratio between them and road deaths. If it were truly more dangerous on a per-trip basis, you'd expect the number to at least be a significant fraction. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20010907173322/http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/risks_of_travel.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20010907173322/http://www.number... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... Edit: Very good analysis done by another user, over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40822484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40822484
      - rvnx 2y ago
        Thanks for finding out the info (especially for digging out the edit), it’s interesting to read

rvnx 2y ago

just for info, for planes it depends, for daily short-distances (aka, because of the "per trip" risk), they are actually more dangerous than a car. It's true for long-distances, but not for short.

coldpie 2y ago
Interesting. Do you have a source for that? Does that include people crashing privately owned airplanes (which I don't think are relevant to this conversation)?
- rvnx 2y ago
  Yes, you can compare figures here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_accident But it's anecdotal, I mean, realistically, the plane is still better for long distance. You can sort by journeys, vs, km.
  - coldpie 2y ago
    That seems to be sourced from a plain HTML page from 2001, reporting stats limited to the UK through the year 2000[1]. I guess it's not implausible, but it doesn't seem to line up with these more up to date US-based stats[2] where airline deaths are so close to 0 that it's hard to form a meaningful ratio between them and road deaths. If it were truly more dangerous on a per-trip basis, you'd expect the number to at least be a significant fraction. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20010907173322/http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/risks_of_travel.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20010907173322/http://www.number... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... Edit: Very good analysis done by another user, over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40822484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40822484
    - rvnx 2y ago
      Thanks for finding out the info (especially for digging out the edit), it’s interesting to read