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Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

We plan for car crashes by wearing seatbelts, buying insurance and some even buy cars based on safety features. Carrying an SSD seems a little over the top to me when there’s cloud backups, but perhaps there are reasons the poster doesn’t trust cloud services.

And FWIW when I fly I keep my passport, phone and medicine on my body at all times. While the odds of a crash are low it’s better to spend 15 seconds preparing (especially since there’s barely anything else useful to be doing while in the terminal or airplane).

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Car crashes are much, much more frequent though. I think the point the parent is trying to make is plane crashes are infrequent, and the worry isn't worth it - especially compared to what you can actually do.

It resonates with me quite a bit since my parents worry about everything, even trivial things, or would spend a silly amount of time trying to save pennies - not worth it. Given that humans are bad at probabilities/risk assessment, and that people survive way worse disasters, and that SSD probably isn't so important once you gain a different perspective, maybe it is worth worrying less in the long run.

At least in the us seats belts are mandated by law, as is insurance. It is about Risk analysis. The odds your plane crashes is close to zero. The odds you are in a car wreck is greater than zero. A lot of people get the analysis wrong, and out too much effort into something that probably won't happen. That being said, carrying an SSD drive while traveling isn't a bad idea. But not because the plane might crash

Carrying your passport on your person has nothing to do with planning for a plane crash. You probably carry your phone in your pocket walking down the street just in case of... meteor strike? Godzilla attack?

Correct but missing the point. Passport on your person is a small and easy precaution for tons of unknown unknowns while travelling. A plane crash being one of them.

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