with things like safety, statistics can be a negative distraction. No matter which way they point.
I think that the most informative story approach, is to look to what the predominant goals of the people running things are.
With any significant enterprise, when SAFETY is the real number one priority, safety improves.
Whenever another factor takes priority, that improves, and safety declines.
In addition, whenever a new technology is introduced, a learning period ensues, which may or may not result in a seeming back step in safety, even though attention to safety remains high.
And don't forget how politics affects the APPEARANCE of safety. Politics of all kinds, too. Politics isn't just about Democrats versus Republicans, it's about prioritization and publicity as well.
Crew resource management (CRM) is one of the more interesting (to me) aspects of aviation safety. The general idea is to eliminate the “CAPTAIN IS KING AND THE REST OF YOU JUST DO WHAT I SAY” atmosphere and instill a more cooperative environment; the captain may indeed be the final arbiter, but he hardly ever has all the information and brains. His subordinates comprise a massive resource of awareness, experience and intellect, and so under the tenets of CRM they are duty-bound to diplomatically present their concerns and recommendations to the captain, and the captain is duty-bound to accept such information and give it due consideration. There’s more to it than that of course, but the general idea is to assure free flow of information and clarity as to who is taking care of what.
According to the Wikipedia page, CRM has spread to other fields including ATC and aircraft maintenance, further improving those aspects of aviation safety. These days, when a crash is attributed to human error you can often point to ways in which better adherence to CRM might have saved the day. Asiana 214 is one example; AF447 is another. OTOH, United 232 is often held up as the gold standard of how CRM can help a crew make the best of a seemingly impossible situation (they crash-landed, but with less loss of life than anyone would have thought possible under the circumstances).
My dad told a story from his days as a Navy VIP transport pilot back in the late 1950’s. In mid-flight they suddenly experienced smoke in the cockpit. Standard procedure is to manually trip the gang bar that shuts off all non-critical electrical circuits; after switching off all the individual breakers, you flip the gang bar back on, then flip the individual breakers on one by one until you find out which one is making the smoke. WELL, flipping the gang bar shut off the autopilot, which no one thought about - and the plane settled into a shallow descent. No one noticed, because nobody had explicitly taken responsibility for flying the plane. It was a cabin attendant who had popped his head in the cockpit for unrelated reasons and happened to notice the altimeter slowly unwinding, and asked the cockpit crew if it was supposed to be doing that. The were still up around cruising altitude, so nothing had gotten OMG-close, but it’s that kind of thing that CRM is also supposed to prevent, e.g. someone is supposed to call out “I have the plane.”
Arguably the collision at Tenerife in March, 1977 was one of the most dramatic examples of this. The accident was the result of a perfect storm of different contributing causes, but one pivotal moment comes from the KLM cockpit voice recorder. The captain is a highly respected senior pilot who’s even been used on the airline’s advertisements, so he’s been elevated to the status of a sort of iconic demi-god. Yet it is this captain who mistakenly thinks he’s received takeoff clearance when he has not, and then the KLM crew miss a key part of the conversation due to radio interference between the tower and a Pan Am 747 that is still on the runway coming towards them and shrouded by fog. But what finally does them in is the captain arrogantly ignoring his own crew warnings.
The flight engineer tries twice to warn that it plainly sounds like the Pan Am is still on the runway – the tower asks Pan Am to report when they’re clear of the runway and Pan Am acknowledges “we’ll report when we’re clear”. He asks the captain twice, “Is he not clear then?” and “Is he not clear that Pan American?”. The captain dismisses it with an emphatic “jawel!” (“oh, yes!”) and no one challenges the decision. Fifteen seconds later KLM collides with the Pan Am in the worst accident in aviation history.