Outside of a brief aside in the movie Fight Club and what I assume are economic reasons, I’ve never seen good compelling reasons why airplanes are grounded for accidents, while cars do not seem to undergo the same level of scrutiny?
Is it just because cars are tested more before they enter the market?
From an outsider’s perspective, it seems that airplanes are already much safer than cars- so what gives?
In: Engineering
The industries are very different – the auto industry depends on selling vehicles to private individuals and lobbies extensively to keep safety problems “in house”. Safety problems are typically delayed, blamestormed against the driver or external conditions, and obfuscated unless the furor is so bad (stock price drops, legal costs mount) that they have to act on a timely basis.
Airplane manufacturers’ entire industry depends on the perception of very safe systems from pilot training to lavatory operation. Anything that happens instantly turns up in the global news and both the customers (airlines) and manufacturers see a huge hit. Watching Boeing dance around the “plug” incident is enlighting. I’m waiting for the poor guy on third shift that was told to skip the fasteners to be pilloried, much as the assembly techs were told to just jerk wiring harnesses through fuel tanks to speed up production in the late 90s.
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