Hacker News Reader

> It doesn’t seem like aviation became safer because pilots took risks

That's pretty much the job of test pilots even today. They are usually dual trained pilots and engineers/technicians, and their job is basically to QA new planes. In military aviation especially test pilots are often feeders into the astronaut program (a different but similar type of daredevil).

Workplace safety improved massively when labor unions became a thing and workers got a say in safety standards.

The workers were not the decision makers.

On the contrary, rules and regulations are written in blood, and airplanes are manufactured stronger in different ways because pilots took risks. The Wings don't shear off when the pilot yanks the yoke left and up because someone did before, and the Wings either fell off or didn't - but until it happened, the wings were an unknown quantity. And that's just one example.

That's basically the job description of a Test Pilot.