Down the street are 2 different KFCs.
One uses oil that sometimes, a very small percentage of the time, will instantly kill you. The other does not. They arrived at using the riskier oil because it saves them 5c a day and it makes the books look better.
Are you really asking why anyone would even bother differentiating these two because the drive to the KFC carries more risk?
Why would you as a consumer want to fly on something with an ever worsening safety record?
Why would you as an airline want the bad press, loss of revenue, and loss of reputation associated with a safety incident?
And to answer your second question, I would fly on the airplane with the worsening safety record if its other characteristics made up for it (price, timing, etc).
Why would an airline want the bad press, reputation effects, etc? That's a circular question to mine. My question was: why do people care so much about this minuscule increase in a minuscule risk? I agree that the game theory of such caring about caring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest) makes sense, but I still wonder why HN readers care about it as individuals, not as Boeing execs.
Because its easier to regulate 30,000 planes owned by a few dozen airlines made by a handful of manufacturers, than it is to regulate over a billion cars owned and maintainted by hundreds of millions of drivers and made by hudreds of manufacturers.
A false argument that keeps getting pushed in the US despite being false.
You are right but the solution is not to say 'Boeing is fine' but rather, the way driving is treated is fucking batshit insane crazy.
When comparing safety within aviation, they talk about deaths per departure.
When comparing safety between aviation and cars, they suddenly change their metric and talk about deaths per mile, making aviation look much better.
I'm not saying aviation is worse than cars if you do a fair comparison; I haven't done the math. Maybe it's still better. But still they are fudging things in their own favor.
Comparing different operators within aviation, using a rate per departure makes sense I think.
I don't get it. It seems like we all make riskier tradeoffs whenever we buy a used car instead of a newer, safer one, or when we buy a slightly less safe new car instead of the safest new car. By not spending more on a safer vehicle, we're saying that we're willing to trade a certain amount of savings for a certain amount of risk.
How much more are we willing to spend to make aviation safer, when it's already so much safer than driving?
One argument I've seen on HN is that most car accident deaths are preventable by a responsible driver, while passengers have no control.
Ok, even if 99% of car accident deaths were preventable, that leaves 1% that are unpreventable. 1% of the ~35,000 car accident deaths in the US each year = 350.
Compare that to ~zero commercial aviation deaths/year in the US over the last decade or so. Source: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics....
If we include Boeings 737 MAX overseas deaths, that adds ~350 deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...
Which doesn't seem to change the picture.