Comment by tuber3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tuber3 | Hacker News Reader

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Can someone explain why the tiny risk of death associated with Boeing's safety issues matters at all compared with the far greater risks that we take for granted (driving, etc.)?

I don't get it. It seems like we all make riskier tradeoffs whenever we buy a used car instead of a newer, safer one, or when we buy a slightly less safe new car instead of the safest new car. By not spending more on a safer vehicle, we're saying that we're willing to trade a certain amount of savings for a certain amount of risk.

How much more are we willing to spend to make aviation safer, when it's already so much safer than driving?

One argument I've seen on HN is that most car accident deaths are preventable by a responsible driver, while passengers have no control.

Ok, even if 99% of car accident deaths were preventable, that leaves 1% that are unpreventable. 1% of the ~35,000 car accident deaths in the US each year = 350.

Compare that to ~zero commercial aviation deaths/year in the US over the last decade or so. Source: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics....

If we include Boeings 737 MAX overseas deaths, that adds ~350 deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

Which doesn't seem to change the picture.

You want KFC for dinner.

Down the street are 2 different KFCs.

One uses oil that sometimes, a very small percentage of the time, will instantly kill you. The other does not. They arrived at using the riskier oil because it saves them 5c a day and it makes the books look better.

Are you really asking why anyone would even bother differentiating these two because the drive to the KFC carries more risk?

Why would you as a consumer want to fly on something with an ever worsening safety record?

Why would you as an airline want the bad press, loss of revenue, and loss of reputation associated with a safety incident?

If the danger KFC is closer and chance of instant oil death is low enough, I would go to that one.

And to answer your second question, I would fly on the airplane with the worsening safety record if its other characteristics made up for it (price, timing, etc).

Why would an airline want the bad press, reputation effects, etc? That's a circular question to mine. My question was: why do people care so much about this minuscule increase in a minuscule risk? I agree that the game theory of such caring about caring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest) makes sense, but I still wonder why HN readers care about it as individuals, not as Boeing execs.

That would be very foolish because the tiny, known chance of death may just be the tip of the iceberg.

As long as you're comparing cars and air travel, I'll point out that the aviation industry lies with statistics when they present the numbers.

When comparing safety within aviation, they talk about deaths per departure.

When comparing safety between aviation and cars, they suddenly change their metric and talk about deaths per mile, making aviation look much better.

I'm not saying aviation is worse than cars if you do a fair comparison; I haven't done the math. Maybe it's still better. But still they are fudging things in their own favor.

per departure comparison makes sense if the risks are concentrated in things that are 1:1 with departures. https://accidentstats.airbus.com/statistics/accident-by-flig...

Comparing different operators within aviation, using a rate per departure makes sense I think.

Because people are emotional and don't respond to statistics like that. 2 planes crashed over a single, critical software usability defect. Now Boeing is a complete trash company and is doing many things wrong. Airbus is perfect and does nothing wrong. With such a small sample size, it could very well be that Airbus is much worse than Boeing. But that's just not how people will perceive it. These businesses know that and know they need absolute perfection.

There are many news articles about Boeing's shoddy manufacturing quality out there, that have nothing to do with software, and they already got many times in trouble with the regulators for it.

because a plane falling out of the air has much larger potential for distruction than car running into another.

Because its easier to regulate 30,000 planes owned by a few dozen airlines made by a handful of manufacturers, than it is to regulate over a billion cars owned and maintainted by hundreds of millions of drivers and made by hudreds of manufacturers.

Boeing delivered planes with loose bolts. If you bought a car with loose wheel bolts you would be upset. Cars are a much larger industry than aeroplanes and instead of “groundings” they have “recalls”, sometimes in the millions.

Right, sorry for the poor choice of words. I agree with the groundings, I'm just surprised by the enormous response in the popular press and HN.

> One argument I've seen on HN is that most car accident deaths are preventable by a responsible driver,

A false argument that keeps getting pushed in the US despite being false.

You are right but the solution is not to say 'Boeing is fine' but rather, the way driving is treated is fucking batshit insane crazy.

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