This Boeing news came at the unfortunate moment when I am facing some upcoming airplane travel, and I 100% had the "dread hypothesis" conversation with Caleb last week. Thank you for helping me name the fear, face it with a wiser perspective, and overcome it!
David, I had a recent conversation with our local superintendent of schools, who bemoaned the fact that so many parents drive their kids to school even though they live within easy walking/biking distance. They remember hearing about the kidnapping and murder of a young boy on his way home from school 50 years ago.
Recent research seems to indicate that as it becomes increasingly rare for kids to engage in activities without adult supervision, it may be contributing to an increase in mental health difficulties:
'All work, no independent play' cause of children's declining mental health
I recently argued with my wife about what age is appropriate for kids to go trick-or-treating on Halloween alone. I thought maybe 12-13, but she insisted that was too dangerous, especially for girls. Of course, in our town of 15,000, there's never been an instance of an abduction of a child going back to its founding in 1850.
In October 2018, and in March 2019, two 737 Max planes fell down from a blue sky, killing hundreds of people. It was the result of "cost effectiveness" and of prioritizing economy over engineering.
Hey David, sorry for the very delayed comment. I've been thinking about this one, and it just makes a lot of sense. It reminded me of an idea I heard once. I'v unsuccessfully tried to track down where I saw this, but I once either read or heard some author/intellectual propose a new way to discuss risk: risk units (this name may be wrong). Their idea was everything should be given a score that is just the number of people in one million that die while doing it. So (with made up numbers) if you had a 50 in 1,000,000 chance of dying while bunjee jumping, bunjee jumping would just be referred to as 50 risk points. If dying on a flight is 0.1 in 1,000,000, then it would be less than one risk point. Driving, as you point out, would be higher. With a comparable scale, we could compare risk odds for things are usually hard to compare and subject to a lot of psychological biases: shark attacks vs. heart disease vs. terrorist attacks vs. sky-diving etc. I don't think it would solve the problem completely, but I really think this could go a long way! It does in my mind at least.
Anyway, here's a totally unrelated question I have. I'm sure you saw the news about Sports Illustrated, and I've read a few pieces talking about the state of media more broadly. I know SI was such a key part of your career, and (as an outsider) it seems like journalism has changed so much already since you got out of the business. Do you have any thoughts on SI/journalism? Here's what I'm wondering more specifically: it made me think of the scientist's award-receiving speech you linked to once where they discussed how their groundbreaking research couldn't happen today because of the way research funding works now. Do you think journalism has changed to the point today where your career would've unfolded differently (and more difficultly) if you tried again today? Obviously you couldn't write for SI today, so you'd work somewhere else. But do you think those somewhere else's still exist and are they nurturing careers like SI did for yours 10ish years ago? Maybe I'm being too pessimistic, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
I spent 3 years in the aviation sector building a new generation of electric aircraft. One interesting shift in "thought" that happened while working there was that... well... our aircraft at some point will crash. Even if the likelihood of it happening is 10^-9 which is the EASA and FAA certification standard (1 malfunction in 1 billion flight hours. Not flights but hours), given enough flights it WILL happen. The imperative then becomes how do we make sure than when it happens it doesn't kill everyone on board and on the ground. How much safety can you pack into the aircraft to minimise fatalities. The aircraft will malfunction, what happens then?
How many hours does one drive a car before there's a malfunction? Certainly far fewer than 1 billion.
Great article! Fear and illogical reasoning lead to irrational decisions. I fly a lot and always find it interesting to watch the reaction among passengers, oftentimes anger, when flights are delayed due to mechanical reasons. Yes, it's irritating, disrupts plans, etc., but I sure as hell am unfailingly grateful the problem was discovered while we were on the ground and not at 35,000 feet.
David, I've been in the aviation safety field for five decades, including as an air traffic controller at LGA, a licensed airline transport pilot and an accident investigator for FAA.
Several months ago, following a fatal accident in another industry the CEO immediately came out and said, "Safety is our Number 1 priority."
That quote is usually heard following an incident after the media infers there were mistakes or a history of risky practices. Invariably, there is a subsequent quote from someone stating, “We’ve been telling them this for years,” and of course that is followed up by a spokesperson who responds, “We take safety very seriously and will get to the bottom of this.”
Really? It's déjà vu all over again.
I was once told by a supervisor in a major Air Traffic Control facility that, “We have a policy of zero tolerance for risk. We run a no risk operation here” – which was clearly impossible. At a major railroad operator, a system engineer told me, “I design tools to run the trains – I have nothing to do with safety” – yet those tools were part of a safety system. An Airport Operations Manager said, “We don’t have anything to do with safety, we’re just a landlord. The airlines are responsible for safety,” – while airport vehicles drove through restricted aircraft gate areas.
These predictable statements are troubling because they show a disconnect between how these people saw their roles relative to system safety. Their statements begs the question, “How can we manage safety if we’re in denial that risk exists in the first place, and if we don’t understand the relationship between risk, safety, and human nature?”
While flying is still the safest form of transportation ever invented by humans, it is still a very risky activity only made possible by a relentless focus on managing risk. But when we loose that focus and take safety for granted, as Boeing seems to have done, we will start to see the number of headlines we did in the 1990's - and I would prefer not to see that again.
My spouse flies commercially. International wide bodies for over 20 years. I’m actually fearful of flying now in a way I never was in the past. You are utterly correct driving is orders of magnitude more dangerous but seeing things from the inside, what has happened to once great companies - going from a culture of safety excellence to a culture of spreadsheets and now layering DEI into the mix, I’m not as confident as I used to be. With Covid hollowing out an industry that was already facing critical shortages from retirements, I’m not so sure the skies are as friendly as they once were. There have been a ton of near misses and safety incidents that haven’t made the headlines in such dramatic ways. No doubt, the aviation ecosystem is under major stress right now.
It doesn't make me afraid of flying. I have taken several flights since.
It does make me ask questions about why planes have declined in safety over the past few years, and if it is a trend. It does appear that quality of many products that are publicly or private equity owned is declining, and it is reasonable to ask whether there is a correlation and whether one should be paying attention.
Wondering if you've ever thought of writing something similar to the NASCAR chapter you wrote at the end of Range to invite folks into curiously considering these questions. I keep coming back to that chapter and thinking that this is the way we should do engineering ethics case studies. (For those who haven't yet read the book, the chapter tells a fictional NASCAR narrative where all the data and decision making situations paralleled the NASA Challenger disaster).
I categorize that storytelling strategy as a "Nathan story", inspired by Nathan's confrontation of King David in the Bible where he uses a parable to get the point across "you are that man!"
The issues you bring up here about safety, risk, and probability are so often short circuited by our mental heuristics. I wonder if there's a story to be written here using some actual data to help us break us out of our cognitive ruts and see these things in a new light.
Thanks for this David, I feel like I'm constantly trying to explain to my family that they're not going to get eaten by a shark.
Two thoughts about your article:
- We make two errors when we think we're a better-than-average driver. First, there's a 50% chance that we're not, and second that regardless of how good we are, we're on the road with everyone - including really bad drivers. We control only a small portion of the risk.
- If I heard correctly, there hasn't been a fatality on a US airline in 15 years. That alone should drive home how much safer air travel is than driving.
Re: In his book Risk Savvy, which I thoroughly enjoyed, Gigerenzer notes that in the three years after 9/11, 2.5 billion passengers flew on U.S. commercial flights, and “not a single one died in a major airline crash.”
Except the 260 on Nov 12, 2001?! And some smaller subsequent incidents? Absolutely way more deaths from car accidents. But not "not a single one..."
Thanks for sharing, and always worth the reminder of the tendency to overreact to the newsworthy/dramatic over the probable. I think there is (somewhat) more rationality in people's behavior than the simple numbers indicate, however, for two reasons.
First, past performance may not be indicative of future results. It often is, and given the orders of magnitude difference between flying and driving, it probably doesn't negate that disparity, but people's concern may be that the airlines have cut corners in production (or, in the wake of 9/11, that airport security is inadequate to the increased attention from terrorists) that would change those percentages going forward.
Secondly, most of us want to feel a sense of agency over our circumstances. In a car, even if we are more likely to die, we feel a sense of agency: we can swerve away from the drunk driver, we can drive carefully, we can control our fate in a way that isn't possible in an airline accident. This may be overestimation of our abilities, or it may be the simple sense that "I'd rather not die like a trapped rat." My biggest gripe with most economic theory is how often it overlooks the real utils that people derive from emotional decisions.
If we were purely statistical optimizers, we'd never buy insurance. The costs of our irrationality are worth considering, but so are the emotional benefits (though they're hard to quantify).
And the feeling that you have more control in your own hands over what happens (driving). While flying as a passenger, you have (approaching*) none.
*Ok, it makes a huge difference if you’re wearing your seatbelt. At least for avoiding injuries from things that don’t crash the whole plane, like sudden and severe turbulence.
This Boeing news came at the unfortunate moment when I am facing some upcoming airplane travel, and I 100% had the "dread hypothesis" conversation with Caleb last week. Thank you for helping me name the fear, face it with a wiser perspective, and overcome it!
David, I had a recent conversation with our local superintendent of schools, who bemoaned the fact that so many parents drive their kids to school even though they live within easy walking/biking distance. They remember hearing about the kidnapping and murder of a young boy on his way home from school 50 years ago.
Recent research seems to indicate that as it becomes increasingly rare for kids to engage in activities without adult supervision, it may be contributing to an increase in mental health difficulties:
'All work, no independent play' cause of children's declining mental health
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230309101330.htm
I recently argued with my wife about what age is appropriate for kids to go trick-or-treating on Halloween alone. I thought maybe 12-13, but she insisted that was too dangerous, especially for girls. Of course, in our town of 15,000, there's never been an instance of an abduction of a child going back to its founding in 1850.
"rare and frightening events don’t strike twice"
With Boeing, they do.
In October 2018, and in March 2019, two 737 Max planes fell down from a blue sky, killing hundreds of people. It was the result of "cost effectiveness" and of prioritizing economy over engineering.
See: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/business/boeing-737-crashes.html
and "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing": https://www.netflix.com/watch/81272421
I'd recommend Peter Robison's "Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing" for a broader perspective on the 737 Max issues.
Hey David, sorry for the very delayed comment. I've been thinking about this one, and it just makes a lot of sense. It reminded me of an idea I heard once. I'v unsuccessfully tried to track down where I saw this, but I once either read or heard some author/intellectual propose a new way to discuss risk: risk units (this name may be wrong). Their idea was everything should be given a score that is just the number of people in one million that die while doing it. So (with made up numbers) if you had a 50 in 1,000,000 chance of dying while bunjee jumping, bunjee jumping would just be referred to as 50 risk points. If dying on a flight is 0.1 in 1,000,000, then it would be less than one risk point. Driving, as you point out, would be higher. With a comparable scale, we could compare risk odds for things are usually hard to compare and subject to a lot of psychological biases: shark attacks vs. heart disease vs. terrorist attacks vs. sky-diving etc. I don't think it would solve the problem completely, but I really think this could go a long way! It does in my mind at least.
Anyway, here's a totally unrelated question I have. I'm sure you saw the news about Sports Illustrated, and I've read a few pieces talking about the state of media more broadly. I know SI was such a key part of your career, and (as an outsider) it seems like journalism has changed so much already since you got out of the business. Do you have any thoughts on SI/journalism? Here's what I'm wondering more specifically: it made me think of the scientist's award-receiving speech you linked to once where they discussed how their groundbreaking research couldn't happen today because of the way research funding works now. Do you think journalism has changed to the point today where your career would've unfolded differently (and more difficultly) if you tried again today? Obviously you couldn't write for SI today, so you'd work somewhere else. But do you think those somewhere else's still exist and are they nurturing careers like SI did for yours 10ish years ago? Maybe I'm being too pessimistic, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
I spent 3 years in the aviation sector building a new generation of electric aircraft. One interesting shift in "thought" that happened while working there was that... well... our aircraft at some point will crash. Even if the likelihood of it happening is 10^-9 which is the EASA and FAA certification standard (1 malfunction in 1 billion flight hours. Not flights but hours), given enough flights it WILL happen. The imperative then becomes how do we make sure than when it happens it doesn't kill everyone on board and on the ground. How much safety can you pack into the aircraft to minimise fatalities. The aircraft will malfunction, what happens then?
How many hours does one drive a car before there's a malfunction? Certainly far fewer than 1 billion.
Great article! Fear and illogical reasoning lead to irrational decisions. I fly a lot and always find it interesting to watch the reaction among passengers, oftentimes anger, when flights are delayed due to mechanical reasons. Yes, it's irritating, disrupts plans, etc., but I sure as hell am unfailingly grateful the problem was discovered while we were on the ground and not at 35,000 feet.
David, I've been in the aviation safety field for five decades, including as an air traffic controller at LGA, a licensed airline transport pilot and an accident investigator for FAA.
Several months ago, following a fatal accident in another industry the CEO immediately came out and said, "Safety is our Number 1 priority."
That quote is usually heard following an incident after the media infers there were mistakes or a history of risky practices. Invariably, there is a subsequent quote from someone stating, “We’ve been telling them this for years,” and of course that is followed up by a spokesperson who responds, “We take safety very seriously and will get to the bottom of this.”
Really? It's déjà vu all over again.
I was once told by a supervisor in a major Air Traffic Control facility that, “We have a policy of zero tolerance for risk. We run a no risk operation here” – which was clearly impossible. At a major railroad operator, a system engineer told me, “I design tools to run the trains – I have nothing to do with safety” – yet those tools were part of a safety system. An Airport Operations Manager said, “We don’t have anything to do with safety, we’re just a landlord. The airlines are responsible for safety,” – while airport vehicles drove through restricted aircraft gate areas.
These predictable statements are troubling because they show a disconnect between how these people saw their roles relative to system safety. Their statements begs the question, “How can we manage safety if we’re in denial that risk exists in the first place, and if we don’t understand the relationship between risk, safety, and human nature?”
While flying is still the safest form of transportation ever invented by humans, it is still a very risky activity only made possible by a relentless focus on managing risk. But when we loose that focus and take safety for granted, as Boeing seems to have done, we will start to see the number of headlines we did in the 1990's - and I would prefer not to see that again.
My spouse flies commercially. International wide bodies for over 20 years. I’m actually fearful of flying now in a way I never was in the past. You are utterly correct driving is orders of magnitude more dangerous but seeing things from the inside, what has happened to once great companies - going from a culture of safety excellence to a culture of spreadsheets and now layering DEI into the mix, I’m not as confident as I used to be. With Covid hollowing out an industry that was already facing critical shortages from retirements, I’m not so sure the skies are as friendly as they once were. There have been a ton of near misses and safety incidents that haven’t made the headlines in such dramatic ways. No doubt, the aviation ecosystem is under major stress right now.
It doesn't make me afraid of flying. I have taken several flights since.
It does make me ask questions about why planes have declined in safety over the past few years, and if it is a trend. It does appear that quality of many products that are publicly or private equity owned is declining, and it is reasonable to ask whether there is a correlation and whether one should be paying attention.
New post, new comment. I'm sure you're shocked!
Wondering if you've ever thought of writing something similar to the NASCAR chapter you wrote at the end of Range to invite folks into curiously considering these questions. I keep coming back to that chapter and thinking that this is the way we should do engineering ethics case studies. (For those who haven't yet read the book, the chapter tells a fictional NASCAR narrative where all the data and decision making situations paralleled the NASA Challenger disaster).
I categorize that storytelling strategy as a "Nathan story", inspired by Nathan's confrontation of King David in the Bible where he uses a parable to get the point across "you are that man!"
The issues you bring up here about safety, risk, and probability are so often short circuited by our mental heuristics. I wonder if there's a story to be written here using some actual data to help us break us out of our cognitive ruts and see these things in a new light.
Thanks for another thoughtful piece!
Thanks for this David, I feel like I'm constantly trying to explain to my family that they're not going to get eaten by a shark.
Two thoughts about your article:
- We make two errors when we think we're a better-than-average driver. First, there's a 50% chance that we're not, and second that regardless of how good we are, we're on the road with everyone - including really bad drivers. We control only a small portion of the risk.
- If I heard correctly, there hasn't been a fatality on a US airline in 15 years. That alone should drive home how much safer air travel is than driving.
Re: In his book Risk Savvy, which I thoroughly enjoyed, Gigerenzer notes that in the three years after 9/11, 2.5 billion passengers flew on U.S. commercial flights, and “not a single one died in a major airline crash.”
Except the 260 on Nov 12, 2001?! And some smaller subsequent incidents? Absolutely way more deaths from car accidents. But not "not a single one..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft_in_the_United_States
Thanks for sharing, and always worth the reminder of the tendency to overreact to the newsworthy/dramatic over the probable. I think there is (somewhat) more rationality in people's behavior than the simple numbers indicate, however, for two reasons.
First, past performance may not be indicative of future results. It often is, and given the orders of magnitude difference between flying and driving, it probably doesn't negate that disparity, but people's concern may be that the airlines have cut corners in production (or, in the wake of 9/11, that airport security is inadequate to the increased attention from terrorists) that would change those percentages going forward.
Secondly, most of us want to feel a sense of agency over our circumstances. In a car, even if we are more likely to die, we feel a sense of agency: we can swerve away from the drunk driver, we can drive carefully, we can control our fate in a way that isn't possible in an airline accident. This may be overestimation of our abilities, or it may be the simple sense that "I'd rather not die like a trapped rat." My biggest gripe with most economic theory is how often it overlooks the real utils that people derive from emotional decisions.
If we were purely statistical optimizers, we'd never buy insurance. The costs of our irrationality are worth considering, but so are the emotional benefits (though they're hard to quantify).
And the feeling that you have more control in your own hands over what happens (driving). While flying as a passenger, you have (approaching*) none.
*Ok, it makes a huge difference if you’re wearing your seatbelt. At least for avoiding injuries from things that don’t crash the whole plane, like sudden and severe turbulence.