Why do governments spend so much effort and money trying to eliminate all threats to air travel safety?
As I understand it, even including 9/11, air travel is far safer than automobile travel by just about any possible measure. And 9/11 could have been prevented by simply barricading the cockpit doors. But despite this, we have enacted systems requiring considerable staffing, elaborate equipment, and the waste of inconceivable amounts of travelers’ time. Now we can anticipate an entirely new set of precautions, technology and inconveniences, related to the possible - but never successfully implemented - use of liquids and gels to create explosives to bring down a plane. What is the incremental value of attempting to identify threats other than explosives, firearms, and certain lethal weapons?
On an economic basis, why don’t we simply acknowledge that air travel cannot be made 100% risk free, and allocate the expenditures elsewhere. A compensation fund for anyone who might die due to air-terror would cost far less than what might be saved from expenditures towards security.
Market forces could accommodate folks’ willingness to assume the risk of air travel. Maybe highspeed rail would experience growth. Or a “high security” airline could start up and charge a premium.
In the meanwhile, government funds spent on what is essentially a subsidy to air travel could be spent increasing security elsewhere - such as cargo containers in our ports, effective intelligence gathering, or potential threats to our energy and information infrastructure.
Why won’t that work? Because its a thoughtful, level-headed way to approach the problem and it makes sense. You can’t scare anyone like that. I have a dream… A dream of a nation where politicians speak plainly to you in reassuring tones and level-headed responses. A dream where policy is made, not on the over-reactions of fear mongers, but on common sense and practicality…
I dunno; I think there’s a certain visceral horror at the idea of a plane crash that isn’t necessarily shared by other forms of travel-related death, so it just seems natural to put more effort into stopping them.
I guess that’s part of the reason why terrorists target them too.
But the questions remain, what level of precaution needs to be maintained, how do you assess the actual level of risk, and are there other areas towards which finite security dollars could be applied?
I guess a lot does rely upon the visceral impact of air disaster, because I am regularly surprised at what I perceive as the disproportionate level of attention paid to air travel safety, while at the same time, amazed that terrorists have not directed their activities towards other, less secure targets.
Uh, maybe because when you send a multi-ton flammable hunk of metal into the sky and don’t take precautions, it has the great potential to affect people other than the travelers, such as, oh, I don’t know, 3,000 dead people at the WTC who were not actively assuming the risks of air travel at the moment of their deaths?
If a plane fell on my house due to ANY forseeable and preventable measures (and I live in the landing path of LAX as I type this, so this is not as much a hypthetical as you might think), you’d better believe I’d vote to oust the happy asshole who cut back on appropriate funding for that prevention.
Don’t think I’ve ever done this before, but I’m going to repost my thoughts on this subject from one of the other UK-plot inspired threads. In my defense, the thoughts are more directly responsive to the OP here.
IMHO, the problem is intractable. And ironic. Every day, millions of people climb into cars, even though they know there’s a non-zero risk they will die in an accident. Last I checked, US auto fatalities run about 38,000 per year. A low risk, but very definitely non-zero. Meanwhile, we as a society expect air travel to be ZERO risk. A single plane blown up by terrorists would be considered an abject failure of the system. Followed by lots of finger pointing at those who let us down. Given that, the system protects itself by implementing more and more security measures, both to reduce risk and to assure the public they’re being protected. Some of us grumble that the measures have gone too far, but most subscribe to the anything-that-makes-us-safer-is-okay mentality. If anything, they’re more worried about the holes in the system than whether it’s trying too hard. So long as that’s the model - and I don’t thinks it’s going to change - we’re going to be stuck with increasingly intrusive and draconian security measures trying to ferret out every possible risk.
What frustrates me most is that, in a real sense, the terrorists have achieved their objective. They have made us afraid. We as a society have given up billions and billions of dollars in productivity since 9/11 (is anyone aware of a plausible estimate of just how big is that bogie?) because we’re scared s***less that three hundred of us might die in a plane explosion. Personally, I would prefer that we approach the problem from the other end. Define a level of security measures we find acceptable - say, an hour processing time per passenger, including time in line - do what we can with that expenditure and accept the non-zero risk those measures will occasionally fail. As I said, though, I don’t see this approach ever being adopted.
You realize, of course, that the WTC/Pentagon deaths would not have occurred had the hijackers been denied access to the cockpit.
I am not sure what the stats are concerning the probability of a plane landing in a populated vs unpopulated area. But the chance of any particular house being hit could be accomodated through insurance, and adjustments to property value.
The terrorists’ objectives certainly go well beyond making people afraid; they’re looking for wholesale political and social change in the Middle East and eventually everywhere.
I really like that post, [PBear**. Sorry I didn’t read all the UK-plot related threads.
Regarding this part:
How unusual am I in regularly being amazed at this ovine response?
Want me to take off my shoes? Sure thing. Want to take my nail clippers? Here you go. No fluids or cosmetics? Cavity search? Baaa!
But if you express any question as to the need for any particular security measures, you run the risk of being immediately confronted by hostile guards with automatic weapons, as well as potential prosecution. Lovely.
The two situations are not comparable, IMO. If terrorists were to set up camp on the sides of major freeways and begin taking potshots at cars with rocket-propelled grenades, would you simply lump it into the risks inherent in auto travel? “If you don’t like the idea of dying in an RPG explosion on the road, don’t drive?” Or would you demand your government do something to alleviate the problem?
The only places on earth where the former sort of attitude prevails is in hopeless fourth-rate nations with bottomlessly inept and corrupt governments. The determination of whether the traction this attitude seems to be gaining amongst otherwise learned Americans is an indication that a bottomlessly inept and corrupt government is turning this country into a hopeless fourth-rate nation is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don’t think the US is trying to acheive perfect air safety. The US approach seems to be strictly reactive to executed or uncovered terrorist plots.
Surely, in the five years since September 11th, it occurred to somebody in Homeland Security or the TSA that you can use liquid explosives, no? But the public wouldn’t have stood for the measures being taken now if it hadn’t been demonstrated that it was a threat.
The current response strikes me as the politicians running around and waving their arms, saying, “See? Look! We’re doing something about it!” A year or two from now, the restrictions will be relaxed, to the relief of millions of air travellers who have short memories.
RickJay: What you say is both true and untrue. Yes, the ultimate objective of the terrorists is to effect social and political change. In that, they have not yet succeeded. OTOH, the proximate objective is to “put pressure” on us by making us afraid. In this, I think they have succeeded.
scotandrsn: At the risk of sounding glib, no, I wouldn’t consider terrorists sniping at cars a different kind of risk. In a universe where 38,000 of us die each year from ordinary car accidents, why should an extra twelve dying from snipers be “special”? In fact, it would scare the daylights out of us. Recall the DC snipers a few years ago. IMHO, this merely confirms our extraordinary sensitivity to unusual and malicious threats. Doesn’t make it rational.
padabe: I agree. George Carlin did a bit on this a few years ago. After Locherbie, the airlines made a big thing of asking the “three questions,” because the vector by which the explosives were introduced involved unsupervised luggage. So, yes, we invest a lot of effort in chasing the last identified tactic, which is both over and under inclusive.
“Those Who Forget History Are Doomed to Repeat It”
The auto industry and Departments of Transportations are constantly improving on the safety of auto travel. Seatbelts, crumple zone, road designs, child seats, etc.
Why should air travel be any different? 911 raise the awareness that planes could be hijacked to be used as missiles, not just to get the hijacker someplace. The bomb threat in London showed that liquids carried on could be used to take down a plane.
Why would you possibly not take precautions based on past problems? Just how much of an inconvenience is it to not take your double mocha latte on the plane, or to check your toothpaste?
The OP is getting at the issues in risk analysis models. We know how to make many things safer. We could require people to outfit their cars with in dash breathalysers that every person has to blow into before the car will start every time. We could require extra-thorough vehicle inspections every three months because some poorly maintained cars had a mechanical problem and killed some innocent people. At some point you hit the law of diminishing returns and you start to inconvenience people to a great degree and you start to burn huge amounts of money doing it. You have to decide if the costs are proportionate with the risk. People tend to be very bad at that sort of thing intuitively and we often focus on one narrow set of risks as opposed to looking at the whole universe of risks and benefits.
Believe it or not, preventive measures can have really bad unintended consequences when you are dealing with really large numbers. One scenario would be that the new security measures interfere with someone’s medication schedule and they die from it (only one of many possible examples). Something like that will likely happen and the sickness, injury, death, and just plain resource drainage are occurring uncounted on one side while officials are trumpeting the lack of terrorist deaths.
Anyway, you can’t stop people from blowing up a plane if they really want to. I really like planes and I started trying to come up with scenarios like this a few years ago. There are too many ways to do it and I have to assume they aren’t all that bright because the current scenario seems obvious but also nearly unpreventable. I get really annoyed with people in the media and on this board saying that the current plot would not have succeeded because people would have noticed the mixing and the smell. Have you ever heard of a lavatory? I have no idea if that is what they were planning but it is a little sanctuary just by its nature and you have privacy. I have no idea to this day why Richard Reid (the would-be shoe bomber) didn’t know that. You don’t need to care much about the lavatory smoke detectors going off if the plane is going to be blown up in a few seconds anyway. That is just one example of a security weakness that is extremely hard to overcome. Are we going to need a pass and an escort to use the john now?
The known security problems are too numerous and insurmountable for anyone to plug the all and what is the cost in all terms if we try?
I should also add that the overall goal isn’t to stop airliners from being blown up although people tend to get blinders on and think that it is. The goal is to stop a large-scale terrorist attack that affects U.S. interests. That could involve buses, trains, buildings, whatever. If they wanted to do it in the air again, there are still plenty of large private planes. The current air travel procedures are sucking a huge amount of resources and attention away from the overall issue. On the other hand, what would life be like if we decided equivalent measures to the airlines are needed for every conceivable target in the U.S. Again, we know how to but why would you want to?
Tastes of Chocolate, I was making two points, on one of which Shagnasty has ably amplified. Right, there’s a problem of diminishing returns. For example, as scotandrsn noted, we are at risk for snipers. Would you advocate requiring that all cars be retrofitted with bullet-proof windows? But, frankly, my main point is that we have a wobbly sensitivity to risk. With some things we accept risk as a matter of course, others we think should be risk free. I posit that we should accept reasonable levels of risk in all things and get on with our lives. That’s not suggesting we do nothing, only that we don’t try to do everything. Which, in any event, isn’t possible.
If, in fact, the terrorists are so bright, then why do we direct such a seemingly disproportionate amount of our attention towards their last efforts? They lack sufficient creativity and/or resources to try a new approach?
And if terrorism is such a tremendous threat, why have we not seen attacks on our trains, roads, or anyplace where large crowds gather such as snipers or rockets aimed at parades or sports stadia? I hear so much about weapons proliferation, but have not yet heard of a terrorist parking outside an airport with their trusty shoulder-fired missile launcher.
Even tho this is GD, I will offer my opinion that the appropriate goal is to determine when a certain activity is “safe enough” - not perfectly safe. Heck, if we want to reduce traffic injuries/fatalities, why not limit cars such that they go no faster than 20 mph? Or, since the majority of accidents occur within a mile of home, why not require that everyone park 1.1 miles away from where they live?