A Touch Of Perspective On Accidents

Aero-Views by Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien

We get a lot of weird press releases at Aero-News. Sometimes we get the skinny on new planes, or new technology, or industry movers and shakers who are moving (usually up: no one issues a press release when he's booted downstairs) and shaking.

And then there's the oddball stuff. As near as I can figure it, a lot of aviation-world PR people have wider PR practices, and they send us everything, including the kitchen sink. Just last week we got, among others:

• Something on Adventure Diving Safaris. Sorry, wrong direction.
• Something about the earnings of Starwood Hotels and Resorts.
• Something on how enthusiastic American drivers were for Big Brother traffic monitoring.
• Something about electronic surveillance of speeds of trains. (Trains? They still have them? Who knew?)
• Something about an autonomous vehicle competition in the desert. C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'air.
• PR from The National Safety Commission Comparing July 4th traffic deaths to shark attacks.

Now, most of these press releases go right into File 13, but I got thinking about the last one. The point of the press release was reasonable, and it was, reasonably, extensible to our trade.

The media adore the sensational, shocking -- and therefore, rare -- story. The politicians react to the media. Most of them care little about their constituents, but read the Washington Post with rapt attention.

So we can look forward to a variety of pronouncements about shark attacks and the necessity to DO SOMETHING about sharks.

Unfortunately, sharks do not read the Washington Post and do not know that they are not supposed to eat humans. To them, we probably taste like chicken. And the sharks were here first; the sea is theirs and to some extent we, whose element the sea is not, venture there at our peril. Enter the ocean, and you enter the food chain.

Now, if you were to read the papers, you would think that sharks eating people was a problem of alarming frequency... and you would demand that the politicians DO SOMETHING. But, until the sharks submit to lawfully constituted authority, an unlikely prospect for something with the primitive brain of those ancient fish, nothing a politican does can effect much.

In the meantime, Ken Underwood, President of the NSC, pointed out that some 600 Americans perish in motor accidents on the 4th of July (on the day alone). 

"The number of crash fatalities that will occur on July 4th is more than all of the confirmed, unprovoked shark attack fatalities ever recorded worldwide," Underwood said.

So the parallel with the air becomes clear... as does the parallel with air accidents. People have been lulled by a very, very safe society into the expectation -- the FALSE expectation -- that life will be perfectly safe. That airliners will never crash, and lightplanes will never slam into the ground, depriving good people of life.

Zero accidents is a good philosophical, abstract goal, as long as people understand that it is not going to be achieved forever and endlessly. As a practical, physical goal, it's a chimera. There will always be accidents, and the rarer they are -- the safer we are -- the more hysterically they'll be reported.

Let's consider the numbers and the press, in perspective.

• The 600 lost on the highways in that one day is around 1/3 of our losses in Iraq, and three times our losses in Afghanistan (most of whom are noncombat losses such as... traffic accidents). The press is very worked up about the war casualties, which add up to one bad day for the Army Air Forces over Europe in WWII -- and the AAF had lots of bad days.
• Our total highway death toll equals about 14 9/11s a year.
• The 600 lost on the highways on the typical July 4th for the last five years has been more than the total fatalities in GA accidents in each of those years (source: AOPA Air Safety Foundation's Nall Report).

But pick up the paper on Monday or Tuesday, and the motor vehicle fatalities will be buried way, way, way back in the depths of the paper, unless someone wealthy or famous is unfortunate enough to have died in this way. While, if there is a plane crash, it will be trumpeted from the heavens -- even if all involved walk away. (This has already been borne out locally, where radio and TV are saturating the air with a story of a fatal ultralight crash, but the only one of dozens of serious or fatal car crashes to make the news in this area is a freak accident wherein an alleged drunk, going the wrong way on a divided highway, put several young women and their cab driver into intensive care).

In effect, what is happening is that a relatively scarce event, an airplane crash, gets more press play than a relatively routine one, a car crash, and since people (God help us) form opinions based on what they read in the papers or see on TV, the average Joe KNOWS that flying is more dangerous than driving. (After all, you can put the words "plane crash" into Google News and there's something there every day).

In this case, accurate, but sensationalistically-determined, reporting causes people to form inaccurate ideas, even ones at complete odds with the fact. It's based on news judgment determining what is and isn't reported, which is itself driven by the constant need for novelty on the broadcast stations.

Because of those inaccurate ideas, politicians gear up to DO SOMETHING that may have a directly counterproductive effect. And yet, everybody in the whole system -- the news people, the citizenry, the politicians -- basically means well.

But these misperceptions have very real consequences. People decide to drive 1500 miles to Disneyland instead of taking an airline, thereby exposing themselves to inordinately higher risks. You are more likely to die in your bathtub than an airliner, for crying out loud (not that I am suggesting that you abandon personal hygiene).

I wish that we taught the scientific method, understanding logical fallacies, and fundamental statistics, in high school. I wish that we could get across to people that risk in life is never zero. I wish people would worry more about the drunks in the road than the sharks in the sea. I wish people would understand that a 1,500 pound airplane lost in the sky is not a real threat, but an imam preaching sermons of death and martyrdom on Friday is.

I wish.

Remember, the greatest risk is overeating, followed by driving, so I hope you all go flying. Me, I'm driving... to the airport.

For one thing, it's a good place to be safe from the sharks....

FMI: www.nsc.org, http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/