Planes are the safest form of transportation if you look at safety per km travelled. If you look at other metrics, like safety per trip or per travel time then they are less safe than busses or trains.
Planes have nonetheless huge advantages over the others, like if you have to travel hundreds of km, or across the ocean.
Cruising through the Atlantic in a Greyhound would be wild, though.
As with all statistics, you can make the numbers say what we you want. Planes can carry 500+ people, so an incident risks all 500 of those passengers; similar for rail, but not so much for the bus. And I think about bus and there’s two different kinds of buses, IMO, the inner city bus that’s on the road for hours, but doing few miles while making frequent stops. Not sure what a journey is then, whether it’s stop by stop or from start to finish. And there’s
So yeah, I dunno. If it’s your time it’s your time. I don’t think any of these means of travel are “unsafe,” whatever that means. But I’ll still have a couple of beers before I get on the plane, because I’m not afraid of flying, but having a couple beers beforehand makes it better.
Last time I posted something about this, it was downvoted to oblivion. Glad to see that didn’t happen here. There are some statistical quirks that make this obvious once you think about it though.
Planes tend to make long trips, so anything measured on a per-km basis is going to be wildly diluted. Nobody is taking a plane to travel a few blocks. Something like a car will tend to make much shorter (but more frequent) trips, so the per-km stat won’t be diluted. But inversely, the per-trip stat will be diluted with cars, purely because they’re used much more often.
Everyone wants to shit on motorcycles, but it’s as much a red herring as a meaningful statement. You might as well mention that horse riding is 25x more dangerous than motorcycles. And if you really want to get into the weeds, go look up how many motorcycle fatalities are single vehicle accidents, and how many of those are due to speeding or alcohol involvement. So if you don’t drink, and don’t act like a fool, you’re really not all that badly off. Still worse than being in a steel cage for protection, but it’s not only for people “who don’t want to get old.”
So I don’t know how true it is (or isn’t). This wiki article gives a list of “all newsworthy” incidents since 2023. Got two (now three) this year. Five last year. Ten in 2023. But newsworthy is the key word. We have an incident like we did in DC, and in the immediate wake of it there were news reports just about anytime someone sneezed on an airplane (hyperbole).
I’ll tell you, my eye test and feelings agree with you, but I just don’t know how true it is. And it’s hard to avoid getting political, but there is a vested interest in certain news circles to paint a bleak picture (don’t take this wrong, I’m in favor of funding government agencies).
They have seatbelts, but for the most of the flight they are unused - you only need to buckle in during takeoff, landing, and if when encountering turbulence.
I guess there wasn’t enough time to get all the passengers to fasten their seatbelts before the collision?
I wonder if you’ve ever listened to the part of the safety briefing before every flight where they instruct you to keep the seatbelt fastened throughout the entire flight.
Judging by the number of clicks I hear when the seatbelt light turns off, I’d say most people don’t.
At any time, you can expect at least 2-6 people out of their seats if the fasten seatbelts sign isn’t on. But I don’t really care about that part, shit happens
Planes shouldn’t be dodging each other in the first place… That’s the actual problem here. I don’t blame the pilot either, they avoided a collision, so as far as I’m concerned they did what they had to do
i dont even know what youre trying to state or argue. seatbelts should be worn by all seated passengers at all times to mitigate risk of injury in case something that shouldn’t happen does end up happening. obviously there are exceptions like when people need to piss and shit.
Check out John Oliver’s take on air traffic control on LWT
I was a kid when Reagan fired all the striking air traffic controllers. It turns out it takes a long time to train them, so we haven’t recovered from that one incident. It also means all ATCs are overworked, still underpaid and using outdated hardware and methods.
Air travel was screwed even before Trump defunded the FAA.
Fair, but it has gotten very noticably worse based on Trump’s deregulation catching up on the aircrafts and the latest round of forcing out air traffic control
Also, I didn’t know you could just say “all pronouns”. I like that a lot, I’m really uncomfortable putting myself in boxes and that describes my preferences very succinctly
Yes, whereas prior congresses and presidencies squeezed regulatory agencies and let them get captured, Trump is just taking a wrecking ball to them. What we’re going through now really can’t be compared to what happened before, including during Reagan’s term and George W. Bush.
Re: Pronouns, TBH I was in theater as a kid and TTRPGs as a teen and young adult, so it was super easy to get comfortable whatever pronouns suited my character. And yeah, embraced my enby status as I got past my forties.
Yeah, that’ll keep you from getting slammed on the ceiling…in a situation that should never, ever happen. Which I’d over a midair collision, in which case you’re just screwed no matter what you do
I don’t blame the pilot either, they did their job properly. It was the military that failed to coordinate with the civilian air control tower, which also could have been avoided if the civilian tower had radar
What should you do? Demand better. Not think “I would have been fine, they must’ve been stupid”
You can’t protect against every freak event, what you can do is be one drop in the wave that demands competence from our government
There are certainly things that can be done better. My instance should give an idea about how much my government can do about this problem. That said, just like in a car, there is no good reason you shouldn’t be wearing your seat belt most of the time. And there are plenty of situations they can’t fix, such as clear-air turbulence. But the seat belt still helps.
Don’t planes have seatbelts? How did so many people manage to fly out of their seats?
Also friendly reminder to everybody that planes are still the safest mode of transportation by a significant margin
Planes are the safest form of transportation if you look at safety per km travelled. If you look at other metrics, like safety per trip or per travel time then they are less safe than busses or trains.
https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/184330
Planes have nonetheless huge advantages over the others, like if you have to travel hundreds of km, or across the ocean. Cruising through the Atlantic in a Greyhound would be wild, though.
As with all statistics, you can make the numbers say what we you want. Planes can carry 500+ people, so an incident risks all 500 of those passengers; similar for rail, but not so much for the bus. And I think about bus and there’s two different kinds of buses, IMO, the inner city bus that’s on the road for hours, but doing few miles while making frequent stops. Not sure what a journey is then, whether it’s stop by stop or from start to finish. And there’s
So yeah, I dunno. If it’s your time it’s your time. I don’t think any of these means of travel are “unsafe,” whatever that means. But I’ll still have a couple of beers before I get on the plane, because I’m not afraid of flying, but having a couple beers beforehand makes it better.
Have to admit this is kind of funny.
Last time I posted something about this, it was downvoted to oblivion. Glad to see that didn’t happen here. There are some statistical quirks that make this obvious once you think about it though.
Planes tend to make long trips, so anything measured on a per-km basis is going to be wildly diluted. Nobody is taking a plane to travel a few blocks. Something like a car will tend to make much shorter (but more frequent) trips, so the per-km stat won’t be diluted. But inversely, the per-trip stat will be diluted with cars, purely because they’re used much more often.
Bus and Rail rules.
Motorcycles are for the young who don’t want to get old.
Everyone wants to shit on motorcycles, but it’s as much a red herring as a meaningful statement. You might as well mention that horse riding is 25x more dangerous than motorcycles. And if you really want to get into the weeds, go look up how many motorcycle fatalities are single vehicle accidents, and how many of those are due to speeding or alcohol involvement. So if you don’t drink, and don’t act like a fool, you’re really not all that badly off. Still worse than being in a steel cage for protection, but it’s not only for people “who don’t want to get old.”
It sure feels like that margin has been shrinking in the last year or so.
So I don’t know how true it is (or isn’t). This wiki article gives a list of “all newsworthy” incidents since 2023. Got two (now three) this year. Five last year. Ten in 2023. But newsworthy is the key word. We have an incident like we did in DC, and in the immediate wake of it there were news reports just about anytime someone sneezed on an airplane (hyperbole).
I’ll tell you, my eye test and feelings agree with you, but I just don’t know how true it is. And it’s hard to avoid getting political, but there is a vested interest in certain news circles to paint a bleak picture (don’t take this wrong, I’m in favor of funding government agencies).
So yeah, fuck it, you know?
They have seatbelts, but for the most of the flight they are unused - you only need to buckle in during takeoff, landing, and if when encountering turbulence.
I guess there wasn’t enough time to get all the passengers to fasten their seatbelts before the collision?
I wonder if you’ve ever listened to the part of the safety briefing before every flight where they instruct you to keep the seatbelt fastened throughout the entire flight.
Judging by the number of clicks I hear when the seatbelt light turns off, I’d say most people don’t.
You should always have the belt on unless you are standing up for some reason. This story is exactly why.
Where I fly they also always advise to remain fastener regardless of no immediate warnigs. Exactly for situations like this - and others.
Yeah, but people are still going to be using the bathrooms and such, even if you assume everyone actually obeys the rules
Pour one out for the poor fella who finally got his turn to poop just before this happened.
At any time, you can expect at least 2-6 people out of their seats if the fasten seatbelts sign isn’t on. But I don’t really care about that part, shit happens
Planes shouldn’t be dodging each other in the first place… That’s the actual problem here. I don’t blame the pilot either, they avoided a collision, so as far as I’m concerned they did what they had to do
The situation itself never should have happened
i dont even know what youre trying to state or argue. seatbelts should be worn by all seated passengers at all times to mitigate risk of injury in case something that shouldn’t happen does end up happening. obviously there are exceptions like when people need to piss and shit.
No duh. I don’t care if a few people got slammed into the ceiling
I care that two planes almost collided and killed everyone
Why even consider the seat belts? They’re not the real issue here
Of course, but it should be the 2-4 people who are actively going somewhere / in the bathroom, everyone else should have their seatbelt on.
And airplanes shouldn’t be in each other’s airspace
I don’t know what you’re trying to say, the airplanes nearly running into each other is the clear problem
Check out John Oliver’s take on air traffic control on LWT
I was a kid when Reagan fired all the striking air traffic controllers. It turns out it takes a long time to train them, so we haven’t recovered from that one incident. It also means all ATCs are overworked, still underpaid and using outdated hardware and methods.
Air travel was screwed even before Trump defunded the FAA.
Fair, but it has gotten very noticably worse based on Trump’s deregulation catching up on the aircrafts and the latest round of forcing out air traffic control
Also, I didn’t know you could just say “all pronouns”. I like that a lot, I’m really uncomfortable putting myself in boxes and that describes my preferences very succinctly
Yes, whereas prior congresses and presidencies squeezed regulatory agencies and let them get captured, Trump is just taking a wrecking ball to them. What we’re going through now really can’t be compared to what happened before, including during Reagan’s term and George W. Bush.
Re: Pronouns, TBH I was in theater as a kid and TTRPGs as a teen and young adult, so it was super easy to get comfortable whatever pronouns suited my character. And yeah, embraced my enby status as I got past my forties.
There are things you can control and things you can’t. I can’t keep the planes out of each other’s airspace, but I can keep my seat belt on.
That would be more insightful if I wasn’t a pilot…
Tap for spoiler
I’m not.
Yeah, that’ll keep you from getting slammed on the ceiling…in a situation that should never, ever happen. Which I’d over a midair collision, in which case you’re just screwed no matter what you do
I don’t blame the pilot either, they did their job properly. It was the military that failed to coordinate with the civilian air control tower, which also could have been avoided if the civilian tower had radar
What should you do? Demand better. Not think “I would have been fine, they must’ve been stupid”
You can’t protect against every freak event, what you can do is be one drop in the wave that demands competence from our government
There are certainly things that can be done better. My instance should give an idea about how much my government can do about this problem. That said, just like in a car, there is no good reason you shouldn’t be wearing your seat belt most of the time. And there are plenty of situations they can’t fix, such as clear-air turbulence. But the seat belt still helps.