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A comment on The Differences Between the Plane Crash in Tapei and the Miracle on Hudson. Parent comment

Re:The Differences Between the Plane Crash in Tapei and the ... by BurningFrog on Thursday April 09, 2015 @10:39AM (#9347834)
This sounds weird, but that probably means too much effort and resources are being spent on improving air travel security.

One way to think about it is that those resources could save 100 times more lives per dollar in other areas.

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Re:The Differences Between the Plane Crash in Tapei and the ... by pascal_cuoq on Thursday April 09, 2015 @12:03PM (#9348508)
You cannot state that without saying how much is spent per passenger or per mile traveled and the marginal cost in lives of a dollar saved there.

A similar line of reasoning would be “In this developed country that I live in, no one dies from being poisoned by tap water. I oppose this massive overspend on making tap water potable! The resources used to reach this absolute would certainly save more lives per dollar elsewhere”.

How much would we save my making tap water less potable? What would be the consequences if we did?

Sometimes, absolute safety or near-absolute-safety is within reach and is the sweet spot for smart engineering.

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Re:The Differences Between the Plane Crash in Tapei and the ... by astrobe_ on Thursday April 09, 2015 @01:14PM (#9349171)
It actually serves two purposes: protect the passengers, and protect people on the ground (one can think of 9/11 although it's a very special case).
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Re:The Differences Between the Plane Crash in Tapei and the ... by kjs3 on Thursday April 09, 2015 @06:43PM (#9351521)
One way to think about it is that those resources could save 100 times more lives per dollar in other areas.

There is precisely no objective reason to believe that at face value.

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