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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

It's about making people feel safe.

We're not rational beings, so what do you do about an irrational fear? You invent a magical thing that protects from that irrational fear.

You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a road accident, but people don't fear that. They fear terrorist attacks far more.

You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality - short of forcing everyone to travel naked and strapped in like cattle, with no luggage. And even then, what about the extremist who works for the airline?

So you invent some theater to stop people from panicking (a far more real danger). And that's a perfectly acceptable solution.

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> It's about making people feel safe.

I don't think that's a common perception of airport security. Few people take reassurance from it, most consider it a burden and hindrance that could stop them getting their flight if they don't perform the correct steps as instructed.

The lifting of this restriction is an example, the overwhelming response is "oh thank goodness, now I don't have to pay for overpriced water" and not "is this safe?"

I disagree. It is a burden and hindrance, but I'm pretty sure that if you just removed all the checks and let people board like in a bus, there would be complaints.

They're not complaining on the bus...

A bus isn't going to fall out of the air and land in the ocean. A bus isn't going to be hijacked and flown into the top of a building.

And the fact is that there's been some level of security since the 1970s or thereabouts after a fair number of hijackings. Any serious debate is about restrictions around liquids/knives/etc. (Some of which related to isolated incidents like the shoe bomber and others of which seem like pretty clear overreach--like I can't bring a hiking pole in carryon.)

This is what JSX does and people love it.

I thought so too. But having talked to a few people who are generally afraid of flying, they absolutely do take re-assurance from the security theatre. They are very much not interested in having the ease of subverting this security explained to them.

Regular passengers tend to be the ones care about the price of water in the terminal while rare/first time passengers tend to be the ones nervous as hell about everything from getting the bags checked in to the engines falling off the plane during takeoff/landing.

People stopped flying after 9/11 and airlines lost money until the TSA was created and made people feel safe to fly again

Did that really happen in the United States? Certainly not anywhere else.

There's room for both. You can have security checkpoints where they check your bag for liquids, and you should be allowed to fly with them once they confirm its innocuous.

I'm no chemist, but I can't imagine it's hard to test if something is an explosive or just body cream. To pack a punch, I have to imagine explosives need very specific compounds in them.

1) its way harder than you'd expect as many compounds are safe in low concentrations and have other uses. Take TATP- triacetone-triperoxide. yes, the peroxide and acetone(nailpolish remover) in most people's bathrooms should never be mixed.

2) might want to look up how often firearms make it onboard in carry on bagage accidentally. This isn't the typical snarky use of that phrase- it's just so insanely common people don't want to beleive it.

Then we should limit peroxide and acetone, sure.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to forbid >100ml of acetone in flights, and allow people to bring in, say, a bottle of water or a can of orange juice. We can certainly test if something is acetone or orange juice.

> You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a road accident, but people don't fear that. They fear terrorist attacks far more.

This can be traced to people in a car believe they can control whether they have an accident or not (and largely can). In an airplane, however, you have no control whatsoever.

> This can be traced to people in a car believe they can control whether they have an accident or not (and largely can).

This is true. In France, about two thirds out of the people dying in a car accident are the actual drivers responsible for the accident, according to the 2024 Road Safety Report.

And if France it's anything like the UK, the absolute vast majority of these deaths are people driving drunk at night. If you are driving in city traffic at 20mph commuting to work your chance of dying is nearly zero - there's always a chance someone else might be speeding and crash into you, sure, but it's nowhere near the general rate of deaths in cars.

As a seque to this - knowing the above, I find it insane that various institutions are pushing for more and more aggressive driving aids.

My perception is that drink driving is now pretty rare in the UK.

The biggest dangers I see regularly on the road is simple aggressive driving. Overtaking too much, tailgating, multiple lane changes in one go (on motorways), not driving slower in bad conditions.....

That not true. Drunk driving is not remotely the biggest cause, let alone the "vast majority". Speeding is.

And also: note you're only considering the pov of a person inside a car. In the last decade deaths among pedestrians and cyclists have skyrocketed, courtesy of society willingly accepting that it is normal and rational to have 4000kg vehicles with 180bhp being used ubiquitously to move 70kg humans to the grocery store. Since public infrastructure is completely designed around cars, with pedestrians and cyclists pushed to the edges or protected from cars by lines of white paint, it's no wonder this is happening.

I stand corrected - I looked it up and yeah, you are right, drunk driving is only the cause of about ~20% of road deaths in the UK.

>>And also: note you're only considering the pov of a person inside a car.

Well the person above was talking about how dangerous driving is, to which my argument still stands - if you are just commuting to work in or near a city, your actual risk is incredibly low(as the driver or passanger).

"largely" is true, but because planes are more than 3x safer people are still being wrong when they fear plane travel.

People try to treat "largely" as "fully" and that fails.

It's not about statistics. It's about control and knowledge. I know if a car I'm in is driving safely. I can ask the driver to calm down or let me off. In a plane I have nothing. I'm just sitting in a tin can, no idea whether the pilot is flying responsibly or not. No idea whether the landing is routine as hell or kinda sketch. Even if i could talk to the pilot the only thing we can do is land.

And have you thought about airplane landing? It's insane. This big clunky metal bird full of literal jet fuel coming in at like 400kmh or whatever, bouncing around on the tarmac as it's desperately trying to regain control and slow down.

Honestly I don't see how a rational person could not be stressed out in that situation. Yes we all know it usually works out, but we also know if it doesn't work out we're very likely going up in a ball of fire. And no matter what the stats say it doesn't feel like a safe situation. It feels like a near death experience. Seriously. Every time I fly I mentally come to terms with the fact that I might die. Every time we take off and land I'm feeling the bumps and jerks, listening to the sounds and wondering whether this is normal.

I fly at least a few times a year, and I don't take any drugs for it, but I fucking hate it.

> I know if a car I'm in is driving safely. I can ask the driver to calm down or let me off.

Do you know that all the other cars on the road that might hit yours are being driven safely?

How do you feel about busses and trains?

> And have you thought about airplane landing? It's insane. This big clunky metal bird full of literal jet fuel coming in at like 400kmh or whatever, bouncing around on the tarmac as it's desperately trying to regain control and slow down.

A car is a metal box full of fuel kept under control by four rubber balloons.

At least a plane is heavily monitored for safety, checked before every flight, and controlled by highly trained professionals.

> Honestly I don't see how a rational person could not be stressed out in that situation.

A rational person would not be worried. The fear is very much an irrational reaction and a psychological problem that a few people have. Most of us will happily go to sleep on a long flight and our biggest fear is boredom.

A lot of people (here and elsewhere) don't get how many people are just terrified of flying. I was on a flight many years ago (on admittedly a pretty rough transatlantic flight) when the woman next to me was basically in tears and grabbing my arm.

Personally, I don't love being bounced around in a plane but I'm reasonably confident that wings aren't coming off the Boeing jet--whatever the company's other faults.

I'm certainly a lot more nervous driving in a snowstorm or on a twisty mountain road.

I was afraid of flying until I worked at Boeing and acquired an intimate knowledge about how safe they were.

My lead told me they can fix everything but the nut behind the wheel.

If you're in a commercial plane, the driver is acting immaculately, with a margin of error so small you'd never be able to notice any problems. So you'll never need to ask the driver to calm down or let you off.

(But it's worth noting that all the control in the world won't keep you safe in a car. You can have/be an inhumanly perfect driver and it's still pretty dangerous to be on the roads.)

And then every other complaint you list is irrational. "how a rational person" avoids being stressed out is by knowing it's safe. The bouncing on tarmac is safe. Ball of fire is less likely than in a car. Bumping and jerking happens in lots of safe situations. The sounds are normal.

I'm not saying it's wrong to feel fear, but do not pretend the fear is rational.

> The bouncing on tarmac is safe.

It's not long ago that I saw a video of a plane landing in Canada, the right landing gear collapsed and the whole plane rolled around crushing the wings and creating a huge ball of fire. Miraculously everyone survived but passengers described being showered in jet fuel while a huge fireball was going off outside so they clearly weren't far off getting roasted.

It obviously isn't safe. It's a situation where if anything goes wrong, there is a very high chance that everyone involved goes up in flames. Now we all know it usually goes well but saying it's safe is a stretch in my book.

Shit happens all the time in aviation. Planes are told to land on a runway where another plane is taking off. Plane manufacturers install buggy new systems without informing pilots causing hundreds of fatalities. Planes collide in mid air. Birds fly into the engine.

And yes, pilots make mistakes. They are absolutely not acting immaculately all the time. They're human, we all make mistakes. Some, more than others. And some times things go wrong no matter how perfectly the pilot flies.

I never said I feel safe in a car at all times. I just said I feel more in control. But I often feel unsafe in cars too, particularly when I'm a passenger. A lot of drivers drive unsafely by my judgement - they drive too fast for the conditions, too close to other cars, they're looking at passengers, phones, the view, or messing with car settings instead of looking at the road. They get angry for no reason and drive more aggressively. They expect everyone else to drive perfectly and if anyone doesn't do what they expect they have close calls and blame the other driver rather than realizing they should simply have given them more space.

Basically, most people drive in such a way that if anything goes too wrong or goes wrong at the wrong time, they will be helpless to do anything about it. I try to drive in such a way that when things go really wrong I can still compensate for other people's mistakes. Of course it's impossible to be 100% safe but I am quite confident that I'm very significantly safer than most drivers.

> It obviously isn't safe. It's a situation where if anything goes wrong, there is a very high chance that everyone involved goes up in flames.

And "if anything goes wrong" in that strong way almost never happens. It meets my standard for safe, and definitely meets car standards. I'm not sure what your definition is, but I hope it's not that safe=perfect because then nothing would be safe and the word would be useless.

More importantly, you're missing my main point about cars. There are risks you can control, and risks you can't control. Pretend we completely solve the first category, absolutely pristine driving, zero possible mistakes, you have the driver's seat and you're being amazing. The remaining risk from driving is still higher than the total risk from taking a flight.

So while it's rational to prefer being in control in like-for-like situations, the vehicle factor overshadows the control factor. A rational person looking for safety will prefer the combo of commercial flight and lack of control over the combo of car and full control, and feel less anxious on the plane than when driving on a good day. Even if they're a really good driver.

To add to this, here's a piece of anecdotal evidence. I've watched a lot of traffic accident videos in my life, and in the vast majority of the videos including two vehicles, both drivers are at fault.

They may not be legally at fault, I don't really worry too much about that, but by my judgement they could have avoided the accident by paying attention or driving slower or driving less aggressively etc.

Same goes for pedestrians by the way. The absolute vast majority of pedestrians who get hit by cars could have avoided it by paying attention and taking some responsibility for their own safety.

> This is true. In France, about two thirds out of the people dying in a car accident are the actual drivers responsible for the accident, according to the 2024 Road Safety Report. --- This is because a large number of accidents don't involve another car.

Your point?

It's a counter intuitive statistic, I was explaining why it makes sense.

Crucially, deaths among pedestrians and cyclists are skyrocketing in the last decade; those people can't really "control" whether the 4-ton SUV with a 6' high bumper mows them and their kids down.

I've driven around blind corners to discover people standing in the middle of the road. I also read in the paper about people being run over in crosswalks. I use crosswalks, too, and I make sure to look before I step into it. When I jog, I look at the driver's eyes to see if he sees me (if he doesn't, I step far off the roadside). Yes, as a pedestrian you do have a significant amount of control.

I just now noticed the username. There's really no point arguing with you on any topic is there Walter?

A lot more people I've talked to about it say the theatre makes them feel uncomfortable and intimidated rather than making them feel safe. Airport security staff being so gruff and expecting people to know what to do (which casual travellers often don't), then not being able to properly explain what to do and shouting at people...

I really don't buy that the illusion of safety is high on anyone's priority list, it's more that a bureaucracy will grow as much as it can, employing more and more people who might not have better prospects, and no politicians want to be seen to be "comprimising people's safety" by cutting things back. Then "lobbying" from those selling equipment and detection machines probably helps everything keep going.

If it was actually cut back to a proper risk-assessed point of what's strictly necessary, people going thorugh would think "is this safe not having as much security" for about 30 seconds and then never think of it again.

> Airport security staff being so gruff

More of a issue that power goes to their heads.

Do not get me started on airport security staff in the Netherlands that cracked some insulting jokes about my nationality. I was not amused...

Or the idiotic "remove your shoes" so we can x-ray them... What next, go naked? O, that is what those new scanners are for that see past your clothing.

If i can avoid flying, i will ... Its not the flying, its the security. You feel like being a criminal every time you need to pass and they do extra checks. Shoes, bomb test, shoes, bomb test ... and you do get targeted.

The amount of times i got "random" checked in China as a white guy, really put me off going anymore.

Arriving, 50% chance of a check. Departing, 100% sure i am getting 1 check, 50% i am getting two.... Even won the lottery with 3 ... (one in entrance in Beijing: "Random" bomb check, one for drop-off luggage, and one for security) .... So god darn tiring ...

And nothing special about me, not like i am 2m tattoo biker or something lol. But yea, they see me, and "here we go again, sigh"...

> More of a issue that power goes to their heads.

I'm sure this exists too, but isn't the mundane rationale more likely? That gruffness is inevitable because the work sucks?

Overworked, understaffed, the days blur together because it is boring, mostly sedentary work. They are ground down from dealing with the juxtaposition of their role; internally TSA are told they are important because their vigilance is heroic and prevents catastrophe, yet the general public views them with annoyance if not disdain. _Everyone_ they interact with is impatient, and at the that scale of human interaction nobody is really a person anymore, just a complication to throughput.

> It's about making people feel safe.

My guess it's more about being able to say: 'We did everything we could.' If someone does end up getting a bomb on board. If they didn't do this, everyone would be angry and headlines would be asking: 'Why was nothing put in place to prevent this?'

See also all the other myriad types of compliance theatre.

I know literally nobody panicking from some idea of terrorist attack against airplane, this is not a thing in Europe. Neither my old parents, neither any of my colleagues etc. Its not 2001 anymore and even back then we were mostly chill.

But I can claim one thing for sure - people hate security checks with passion.

> It's about making people feel safe.

I think this is true but had to be seen in the bigger context: the Bush administration wanted people to feel that there were threats which required sacrificing things like civil liberties, balanced budgets, or not being at war because if you didn’t fight them “over there” the nebulous “they” come here in a never-ending swarm. Even at the time we knew that the threats weren’t serious but the people making those decisions saw it as part of a larger agenda.

I think it’s simpler, at least for some politicians.

You have to do something. If any other terror attacks happen and you didn’t do something, then “why didn’t you do something?” So you do something.

It’s a $12 bn/yr production. I don’t think that’s perfectly acceptable. Let’s invest in loudspeakers if all we’re doing is shouting at people.

The government who wages the wars and brings its terrors home invades people's privacy and comfort in the small amount of time they have away from the toll they put to pay their taxes, and the people are thankful, after all, all of it is for their safety.

> You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a road accident, but people don't fear that. They fear terrorist attacks far more.

On the contrary, a competent and responsible government should counter the hysteria, not enable it. It should protect citizens from car crashes rather than making a 18-lane highways through residential areas, and it should implement effective measures that reduce effective risk and panic regarding airline attacks, instead of pushing the fear even further with TSA.

> You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality - short of forcing everyone to travel naked and strapped in like cattle, with no luggage. And even then, what about the extremist who works for the airline?

This is said as an axiom, but we have protected against the motivated terrorist, as shown by the safety record.

Have we protected against the motivated terrorist, or only the motivated terrorist on an airplane?

Is your contention that there haven't been any terrorist attacks, therefore airport security isn't effective?

Because over the last 25 years, there have been a _lot_ of "successful" terrorist attacks in the West, and none of them were on planes.

My point is that if improved airport security just shifts terrorist attacks to other places, the overall safety benefit is not as great as it may at first seem.

That's nonsense - if it was true, all anti-terrorism measures would be self-defeating, but they're not. Decades of aircraft-based terrorist attacks have been completely halted by airport security, and there's no been no correlated increase in other mass casualty events.

If those attack vectors are intrinsically less effective at causing mass destruction then that’s an improvement.

A plane hijacking can evidently cause enormous destruction with minimal equipment and personnel. Even just a bomb on a plane can easily kill 200-500 people depending on the plane’s capacity.

Ground-based attacks since 9/11 have been evidently less effective because a bunch of guys with guns attacking a train station or a rock concert can’t do as much damage as quickly as a hijacker essentially flying a cruise missile into a major office building.

Exactly, air security has actually done a really good job over the last 25 years. I hope they keep improving it.

Mitivated terrorists pivoted to driving cars into crowds and shootings.

Don't forget strapping knives to their hands and slashing into crowds.

As horrific as truck attacks, mass shootings, and suicide bombings have been, no-one have been on the same order of magnitude as airborne terrorism attacks.

The Bataclan, Las Vegas, Nice truck attack - all enormous tragedies. But compare to 9/11, Lockerbie, Flight 182, etc.

Bataclan = 132 deaths + ??? injuries

Nice Truck = 86 deaths, 458 injured

Lockerbie = 270 deaths (presumably 0 injuries)

Air India = 329 (also presumably no injuries)

Conveniently leaving out 9/11, was an attack on the scale of Bataclan, but due to the nature of air travel, had a much higher death toll.

So like, just one not on the same order of magnitude?

No, the vast majority of terrorist truck, car, bombing, shooting, stabbing attacks have single digit casualties due to the security measures in place and the level of difficulty (thankfully) in killing large numbers of people.

For a given number of people, money, resources, and risk, an attack against an airliner will have disproportionate casualties and effect. As above, a similar amount of co-ordination was required for Bataclan vs 9/11, with an order of magnitude fewer casualties.

Iunno, did the bataclan attackers learn to play the drums or guitar?

> It's about making people feel safe.

I think it is the opposite. It is supposed to be a visceral reminder that we are not safe, and therefore should assent to the erosion of civil liberties and government intrusions into our lives in the name of safety.

> You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality

Ah yes, the insidious opponent who learns the inherent vulnerability of ... huge crowds gathering before hand baggage screenings and TSA patdowns.

And these crowds are only there only due to a permanent immovable physical fixture of ... completely artificial barriers that fail to prevent anything 90-95% of the time.

Very true. The queues need to be improved.

Yeah as we've seen with MH370, literally nothing stops the pilot from committing mass-murder-suicide at any point. We just need to trust that they're not feeling particularly depressed that day.

While MH370 is still "officially" unsolved, there were definitely industry wide updates to processes after the Germanwings crash.

Officially yes, unofficially there's really no other explanation.

Airport security never makes me feel safe. It makes me feel violated and anxious.

I haven't really flown before 9/11, but I have used the subway in my city daily both before and after they installed metal detectors and started randomly asking people to put their bags through a scanner. I'm deeply nostalgic for not having to deal with this utter bullshit.

>It's about making people feel safe.

It adds stress. I fondly remember flying in the 80s vs today. Travelling back then was more chill.

Just a lot more people are flying today. Better information flows about flights help to some degree but more planes that are more packed are on the other side of the ledger.

It reminds be of how after a fire at a tube station a lot of people decided to commute by motorbike because of fear of fire.

I seriously doubt that most people are happy with the tradeoffs of safety vs. convenience provided by the TSA. The general idea of x-ray, metal detectors, sure, that's all good. But the stuff with taking off your shoes, small containers of liquid, etc., no. I think if we reverted to a simpler system with fewer oddly specific requirements layered on top, most people would not feel significantly less safe, but would feel less inconvenienced.

The thing about shoes is just dumb anyway - I don't know if there was some period of time where it was required elsewhere around the world but I never experienced it. Literally the only times I've ever had to take off my shoes were during the two times I've visited the US (vs. a over a dozen trips to European and Asian countries).

Liquid restrictions were also lifted in my country four or so years ago for domestic travel, so it's still annoying when getting ready for an international trip and I remember I still have to do that...

I flew out of the UK twice in relatively short succession in ~2018 and the first time was out of London City: did not have to take off my shoes. I was pleasantly surprised by this and concluded common sense had prevailed and it was no longer necessary. The second time was Gatwick, and based on my prior experience I did not take off my shoes. I got yelled at because "everybody knows you have to take off your shoes at the airport!". Then got subjected to an extra search of my luggage as punishment. Of course there was a razor in my bag of toiletries (one of those Gilette cartridge ones with a million blades - not an oldschool safety razor) and promptly 'got got' for that as it could have potentially injured the person searching my belongings. 0/10 would not recommend.

I have to take my sneakers off about three to four times a year while traveling around Europe.

It was a reaction to a very specific incident that happened just after 9/11 so the policy basically took effect at the same time the TSA started existing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_63_(2...

> It's about making people feel safe.

It doesn't make me feel safe. It makes me annoyed. Since TSA are government agents it also pokes a tyranny button for me. I despise TSA with a passion and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. They also have the gall to offer a paid service to get around the delays they cause with taxpayer money. If airport security checkpoints need to be done it shouldn't be government doing it.

One man's fear of safety is another man's job safety.

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