Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyberrock | Hacker News Reader

If they do then I hope there is an additional rule forcing the guardian to purchase an adjacent seat, so there's no risk of someone (me) being guilt tripped into swapping seats.

View on HN

This sounds like a different problem than the one this post is about. For baby-in-lap, no one is being guilt tripped into switching seats because the baby doesn’t have a seat.

If you’re being guilt tripped into switching seats so that a family with a young child can sit together, consider blaming the airline for not automatically seating a young child next to their guardian.

Blame the airline for not automatically seating people who buy tickets together... together. It's just a trick to get travelers to pay extra.

It’s absolutely a trick to get travelers to pay extra, but I can grudgingly accept the nickel and diming when my party consists of adults. When one of the members of my party is a literal 3 year old, it becomes ridiculous.

This is addressed in the first paragraph of the article.

> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead. Since driving is far less safe than flying, a ban would lead to more deaths. I'd love to see more of this "all things considered" thinking around bans.

This is extremely dubious logic with very bad stats.

Vast majority of accidents happen on regular driven known routes not road trips.

I would expect far better from the FAA.

> Vast majority of accidents happen on regular driven known routes not road trips.

It is possible for this to be true while also simultaneously it being true that road trips are more at risk of accidents than regular routes.

> Vast majority of accidents happen on regular driven known routes not road trips.

I always heard people say most crashes happen close to home and I never thought twice about what they were actually saying.

Then one day it hit me: most people don't regularly drive far from home, so of course of accidents happen close to home.

You can't circle around this because simply put per million miles flew the fatality rate is significantly lower than that of driving

You can depends on the cohorts sizes. Order of magnitude is probably large here tho.

I somehow doubt when correct in absolute numbers lap infants are saving any lives.

Run the model in AI on real cohorts and absolute numbers it’s a wash at best and an urban legend at worse. 5 lives saved over a decade. Toothpicks on a plane likely killed more people than that.

To be clear but the NTSB and the American society of pediatrics have both said the FAAs math here is totally bunk.

Most accidents happen close to home because most driving happens close to home it says nothing of the risk of road trips - I expect better from HN commenters.

Per mile. Come on.

Vast majority on a per mile basis? Do you have a citation for that?

Yes both NTSB, Society of pediatrics and DOT have published specifically here on how the FAAs math is total garbage.

That’s not a citation on “ Vast majority of accidents [on a per mile basis] happen on regular driven known routes not road trips.”

Don’t be a r**. The entire argument is built on this data from DOT. This is very well known.

I have no idea what a “r*” is. You’re making claims that aren’t backed up by anything and resorting to insults when asked for an actual citation.

The data doesn’t support the claim that the vast majority of accidents on a per mile basis occur while driving close to home rather than on road trips. The DOT also appears to have published on the side of “replacing air travel with driving will result in an increase of fatalities,” [1] so you’re not even right about your other claim.

“It is known” is not a good basis of argumentation.

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2005-08-26/pdf/05-167...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com