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Comment by rmorrison | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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!

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.

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