Eli5: why do plane fleets get grounded after accidents but car fleets remain on the road even though they may have serious issues?

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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

30 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Far fewer things go wrong with planes both because they are engineered/tested to a much higher standard and the pilots are far better trained. If every single driver had to log simulator hours at the DMV before they could drive a new model car and had to _repeat_ that several times a year, then car accidents would probably go down dramatically as well.

It is because they are so rare that we take each so seriously. If there is a crash, we want to know _why_, because the amount of testing and training make crashes so unlikely.

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