Thursday, April 10, 2008

Killing in the Name of Safety?   [Iain Murray]

With the FAA grounding flights in the name of safety, few people seem to have appreciated that the action may well kill people. 

Bear with me.  Not all those whose flights have been canceled will cancel their trips.  Some will find slots on other airlines, but some will choose to go by car (there being no appreciable competition from rail in most markets).  Automobile travel is more dangerous than commerical plane travel for long distance trips.  With the number of cancellations in the thousands, we can expect very many people to have gone long distances by road who wouldn't have otherwise.  There is a chance that some of these people will be involved in a fatal accident.  It is plausible, therefore, that grounding the flights will have fatal consequences.

Of course, there's also a chance that the safety inspections will find a dangerous situation that would avert a fatal accident involving many more people than the average traffic fatality, but such accidents remain very rare for commercial airlines, for good business reasons (ask Pan Am).

In the end, this is a great example of a risk-risk tradeoff.  The FAA has substituted a dispersed risk for a concentrated risk.  The public, however, is probably no better off, and quite plausibly worse off.

04/10 03:14 PMShare