>Most of those market and technical forces are on the side of economics, not safety.
People seem to think about airline safety a lot, like, an irrational amount given the risk. I would guess that over the decades consumer pressure was a huge driver of safety improvements, and the increasing automation seems to have been a big safety benefit on balance.
The risk that 300 Peoples at once can die? I think that's very rational.
Whats there to think about it? Don't drink it (or not too much), that's where YOU are responsible for YOUR life and not the life of others. The Airline and Pilots are responsible for your safe travel.
>road conditions for motorists and cyclists
In Germany 445 people died in bicycle accidents in 2018, that's 1.5 Aircraft's. And please just use a helmet, but you are right sure. But neglect Air-safety to make Roads safer sounds stupid...why not do both.
43% don't wear helmets and 37% are against mandatory helmets on bicycles, again that's YOUR responsibility:
https://www.thelocal.de/20161207/should-germans-be-made-to-w...
>we're probably over investing in airline safety.
No we hold Airline's responsible for it, if you don't do that this will happen over time:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/business/pakistan-fake-pi...
>50s has a heart attack
True because it's not something you or i can change, maybe he/she had bad habits (drinking, drinking sugar etc) maybe genetic, maybe could not afford a insurance (and this is something we should and could change)
There are social costs to obesity and diabetes. They should be taxed like alcohol and tobacco and selling sugary drinks to children should be curtailed. We should have warning labels and government funded commercial campaigns highlighting the issue. We should subsidize healthier foods like vegetables and promote a healthy and active lifestyle. We should make nutritional education a core part of education.
> But neglect Air-safety to make Roads safer sounds stupid...why not do both.
We presently do both, but we underfund road safety and overfund airline safety. It's a matter of economics. If we're spending $10m per life saved in airlines and $300k per life saved on the road then we could save more lives by adjusting the expenditures.
> No we hold Airline's responsible for it
And I'm happy that we do, but we can still overfund health and safety in one part of the economy at the expense of the other.
Absolute no problem with that, but has nothing to-do with airline security.
>but we underfund road safety and overfund airline safety
I dont know where you life, but here 'WHE' pay nothing for Airline safety, but every passenger does, and flying is still too cheap.
>but we can still overfund health and safety in one part of the economy at the expense of the other.
I really don't know what a country that is, but here (Switzerland) every passenger pays a tax for the Airport which is responsible for the Air-control and the Security, and the Airport just lets Airlines land when they meet international Security standards, its not a public spend but a private one (from the passenger). And i think it's the exact same in your country.
Feel nonetheless relatively safe, because I never fell on my head in the few (spectacular) accidents I had, never broke any bones, always (actively) managed to land hard, or didn't even fall at all.
Imagine accelerating hard into an underpass within the flow of traffic from about 45kph to 60kph to have enough momentum for an easy climb up. And suddenly your handlebar including stern almost hits you in the face because the stern broke.
Doing some crazy moves to keep balance while still holding the handlebar in my hands, braking, not hitting any car, or the curb. Standing, upright...
In winter, on a frozen street, light curved downslope, losing control, gliding outwards, kicking against some pole to push me back, at about 20 to 25kph, back on course. Pole OK, leg too.
Entering a roundabout at about 60kph, hitting the rubberized rear bumper of an unexpectedly braking car with my frontwheel ever so slightly, flying about a dozen to 20 meters, actively summersaulting into a position with downspread arms to absorb some energy before final impact. Hitting hard, holding head up/forward, tingling hands and feet, but not hurt. Clothing unharmed also. (Bike was trashed unfortunately)
Tell me WHY I should wear a helmet?
Do you want us all to look like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Man for safety reasons?
Countries with biking cultures don't use helmets, because it's safe. Safer than countries with helmets. They just don't let cars ride fast near them.
I ride downhill (not on the street) and no one ever told my that riding without a helmet is safe.
As a society the doctors can focus on diabetes, the aerospace engineers can focus on planes, and the city planners can focus on traffic safety, simultaneously.
The reason people are focused on airline safety (to the extent they are), is because there was a huge scandal. It's entirely rational to investigate.
Unfortunately, when budgets are finite, we cannot prioritize everything. OP's argument was that we spend too much money responding to visible, spectacular disasters, and too little on ongoing small harms which add up. There is some good evidence for this - for example Healy et al "Myopic voters and natural disaster policy", which shows that politicians overspend greatly on disaster response and underspend greatly on disaster preparedness.
Another example would be the response to the 2000 Hatfield rail crash, which killed four people. The expensive safety systems then fit on trains cost so much, and added so much to the price of a ticket, that they probably killed more people than they saved, because people moved to on the road - which is a much more dangerous mode of transport.
>we spend too much money responding to visible
I that case the Aircraft producer has to invests that money, NOT the public.
I'm not saying you are wrong, not OP, not you. But the argument is just plane wrong.
Again, nearly every commercial plane-crash goes with 100% loss of life, in a vehicle where you can not break or stop, if something important goes wrong you will crash and loose 300 life's.
But i think we all know that a plane crash or a train accident with 3 death's is much more Frontpage'able than toxic amount's of sugar in drinks, or pesticides, but that's a People and Press problem and not a technical one.
If the aircraft manufacturers, or government, or consumers spend money, it is, ultimately the same money, as a matter for the effects of society-wide investment.
I should not need to trace the path from one spend to the next for this to be clear. We choose, as a society, to spend a very great deal on making air travel much, much safer than car travel, and car travel less unsafe than it once was.
Meanwhile, people are dropping by the tens and hundreds of thousands from sugar poisoning that we permit because the sugar producers have good lobbyists and a truly massive and extremely effective propagada operation convincing people sugar poisoning is what they actually want because it will make them feel young and sporty, not fat and sick as we know to be true.
There used to be an equally effective operation for tobacco. We didn't get tobacco deaths under control until we kneecapped the propaganda.
We spend far, far more than on airline safety and auto safety for medical care for the people made sick by sugar poisoning.
Emm NO, best case it flows back to the society who pay for the product.
Public spending and money from private company's is definitely not the same (with the exception that apple forces you in the future to buy a iPhone).
Money is a mechanism to track and manage resource allocation in a society. Collectively, we make choices as a society, and the money is manipulated to effect those choices. We make poor choices when we confuse choices about money with choices about society.
Yeah you turn around my words, if Boeing invest in the security of the airplane at the end of the day they have less money.
>Collectively, we make choices as a society
Again Boeing is NOT a society.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/business/pakistan-fake-pi...
and the crash that led to the findings: