Transportation: Safety in Numbers |
December 23rd, 2012 |
| safety, transit |
Safety is a social dynamic. When something sufficiently bad happens
people get upset and try to prevent it happening again. Every mode of
transportation can be run in many ways, primarily trading off safety,
speed, and cost. Airplanes are not inherently safer than cars, but the
level of risk we're willing to accept with them is much lower. Why?
Because when a plane crashes a lot more people die, enough to make
news, enough to make regulations. Vehicles that hold more people are
held to disproportionately higher standards in their design,
construction, and operation, because of the immense negative feedback
their creators and operators get when things go wrong. Which means
there's a good rule of thumb for estimating the safety of different
transportation options: the more people that would die along with you
in an accident, the less likely an accident is.
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