To put this risk in perspective, in the US, the odds of being killed in a
automobile crash are about 1 chance in 4000 per year. Those odds are very
bad but we accept the risk because we are accustomed to it. Perhaps we have
done a subconscious cost/benefit analysis. The perception of risk is a
fascinating subject and, when reduced to numbers, makes one wonder about
some of the things we worry about. /jmac
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Steve Dropkin
Sent: Monday, August 14, 2006 8:00 PM
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Re: [OT] Flying with digital cameras
<< snip
According to http://www.planecrashinfo.com, the odds of being killed
on a single airline flight is 1 in half-a-million if you fly the
worst airline in the world and as good as 1 in almost 6.5 million if
you fly on the best carriers. Even if terrorism bumps up those
numbers by a factor of _ten_, that's still no worse than one in
50,000. Hardly any of us would buy a lottery ticket with those odds.
We certainly don't plan our days around such long odds.
To avoid this remote possibility of danger, though, we made people
with illnesses board planes without medicine and tossed away _tons_
of beverages, hair gel, and toothpaste _throughout the entire
airline system in the U.S. and Britain_ to guard against the
possibility that some 60-year-old from Miami in a bad polyester
outfit might terrorize the plane with a her bottle of mineral water.
(Actually, I've smelled some colognes which _could_ do that, but
that's something else.)
Almost every one of us gets into our cars every day and drives
somewhere. We do so without the aid of four-point competition seat
harnesses, huge rollbars, crash helmets, and HANS devices (cf. Dale
Earnhardt) even though those things could save some of the driving
public from a fatal injury. There are many more people driving than
flying. So why are we so "lax" about driving? Could it be that there
has been some reasonable assessment of risk versus benefit?
I find it hard to go along with walking onto a plane without so much
as a book (what kind of weapon is a book -- unless we're talking
"War and Peace" or something critical of the war-mongers in
Washington?) while hold luggage is given a quick once-over and air
cargo is barely checked at all. I find it hard to take security
seriously when the people hired work at a minimum wage (_there's_ a
job with value!) and don't even know all of the rules they're
supposed to enforce (how many discussions have we had on this list
about our "right" to not send film though the X-ray machine?).
No, this security as theater; it is (re)activity substituting for
progress. Next time you're taking off your shoes, subjecting
yourself to patdowns, and shipping laptops full of business
information and your toiletries as baggage (hoping they get there
with us), take the time to think about how "safe" we are and how the
terrorists haven't won .... :-(
Steve
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