Safest Seat on a Plane | Hacker News Reader

Safest Seat on a Plane

popularmechanics.com

29 pointsyigit30 comments

That's the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents...

Ha, 20 accidents since 1971... It'd probably be more helpful to the general public for them to study which side of an ostrich it's safer to stand on.

How many would there need to be to get your attention?

The probability of dying in an air crash is in the order of 10 million to one.

Being killed by lightning is about 1 million to one, being killed in a car crash is about 20000 to one.

So if you spend time thinking about which seat you're going to sit in when you fly to minimize your risk of dying, you are completely wasting your time.

All true, but I can't say taking a couple of minutes to read this article, then using the information in the future is "completely wasting" time.

But how would you use this information? There are other consideration besides safety when choosing a seat (e.g., proximity to a lavatory, first/business class amenities, legroom, etc).

When you bring "chances of survival in a plane crash" into this equation without considering just how astronomically low your odds of an accident are, it's time wasted. IMHO in any reasonable, objective selection mental heuristic the size of this factor is so tiny as to be easily discounted.

What is remarkable to me is that Southwest Airlines has yet to have a passenger die in an aviation accident. And they carry about 100 million passengers per year these days.

Also remarkable is that Qantas has had, I believe, no fatal accidents since 1951.

Well that's a jinx if I ever saw one. Nice going!

It's amazing to me how much hysteria there is in the media when a plane crashes, even a smaller aircraft, while little attention is paid to the number of injuries and fatalities caused by automobile accidents.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, over 37,000 people died in traffic crashes in the United States in 2008, which makes car accidents the 10th leading cause of death. To put this in perspective, this number of deaths is equivalent to 265 fully loaded Boeing 737 crashing, or one every business day of every year.

And how about non-fatal injuries from auto accidents? Over 2.5 million drivers and passengers (the same number of people living in the four states of Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, and Alaska) were injured in 2008. This makes traffic crashes the third leading cause of non-fatal injuries.

Of the injuries caused by traffic crashes, over 10% (or over 250,000) are incapacitating, in which the injury prevents the injured person from walking, driving, or normally continuing the activities the person was capable of performing before the injury occurred.

In sum, in a 10 year window about 1% of the total US population is either killed or seriously injured in a car accident.

One thing which this article forgot was that also the position of the emergency exit relative to your sitting place is important. If you don't sit in the max. range of 7 rows [1] to it, you are likely to not survive a crash due to people blocking each other, smoke and fire.

[1] http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/how-to-survive-a...

The two things I like best about emergency exit rows is that there is usually a couple extra inches of legroom and that there are no children around.

They say that the seats in the back are more safe, presumably because fewer people die in them, but are not the seats in the back usually only filled if the plane is full? The plane would have to be somewhat full in order for someone in the back of the plane to die in a crash. I am not saying that their data is completely wrong, as I am not sure what their methodology was, but it is at least suspect.

My anecdotal evidence from looking at what seats are occupied when picking my seat does not back up that idea at all. Passenger density tends to drop slightly towards the back of the plane, but it's rare to have a plane that's more than half full that has any completely empty rows.

Even if the back of the airplane tended to be empty, the article makes it quite clear that they looked at deaths per occupied seat, not deaths per seat overall.

It'd be more useful to know which is the safest seat in a car, SUV, bus.

Yup.

I recall reading a study that said rear passenger seat (rear right hand side in a RHS driving country) is the safest by a fair margin in a four or five passenger vehicle. Not really surprising if you think about it.

I doubt there will be a high standard deviation for bus seats assuming you mean 40-50 passenger long-distance buses. Somewhat away from the front, close to an emergency exit, and away from any structural weaknesses (if known) is probably your best bet.

"that had both fatalities and survivors..."

Is this saying that they only considered crashes where at least 1 person survived and at least 1 died? If so, doesn't this change the analysis from 'given you will be in a plane crash, how can you reduce your likelihood of dying?' to 'given that you will be in a plane crash and SOMEONE will survive, how can you increase the likelihood that it is you?'

I suspect the quotes at the beginning of the article are principally about the former question (and are probably correct in that context).

Yes. Clearly the chance of survival in a crash is not 50%, regardless where you sit. In the vast majority of crashes either all die, or none do (in which case it's probably not a "crash" but a forced landing). It would be interesting to know what the overall chance of surviving an airliner crash is.

It would heavily depend on the definition of "crash" used.

I agree, and this also implies that the infographic at the bottom is wrong (or mislabeled.)

It's unclear to me what use this information has to anyone, not mention the potential ethical concerns of trying to promote this kind of research under the guise of airline safety awareness.

Sure, I can believe that seats toward the rear of an aircraft tend to fair better in crashes. It's actually rather obvious, hence the decision to place the data recorders in the tail.

However, what use is this research to the vast majority of travelers who have limited choice in where they may sit on a flight? Doesn't this sort of research suggest telling such travelers, "well it sucks to be you, doesn't it?" And what about the airlines' need to fill as many seats as possible meet their bottom lines?

I remember reading once that on military planes, everyone sits backwards because that is safer. I wonder if it is true?

Your lungs less likely to collapse on impact. I've heard somewhere, not sure 100%.

There's been only one fatal jet crash in the U.S. in the last five-plus years

That can't be right.

It is. There have been 3 fatal commercial aviation accidents in that time frame but the other 2 involved propeller craft:

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Paxfatal.htm

Also note carefully: in the US. You might be thinking about other recent fatal jet crashes that happened outside the US.

Interesting link. Ignoring 9/11, the last 10 years the safety has clearly gone up very much compared the previous 20 years. 23 crashes in the 80's, 15 in the 90's, and just 7 in the last decade (again, ignoring 9/11).

On the flipside, every crash except 1 in the last 10 years has been 100% fatal, whereas the previous 20 years there are quite a number of crashes with a lot of survivors.

I dunno, I just find that interesting. :P

Quantas never crashed.

Quantas has never had a _fatal_ crash, in one of their _jets_. Which is different than what you...

Or was that just a Rain Man reference?

There is no "u" in Qantas. Also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Qantas_fatal_accidents

And no fatal crashes since the last fatal crash in 1951, before they had any jet airliners.

was just a Rain Man reference

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