From 2008…..
The Volvo Cars Traffic Accident Research Team has investigated traffic accidents since 1970. Today its accident database contains information about more than 36,000 accidents.
By using knowledge from real traffic situations in the research, Volvo has learned how to design cars that offer a very high level of safety in collisions. The company regards this as a very important base of knowledge when identifying high-tech solutions that can help to entirely avoid or mitigate accidents. In order to take this a step further the Traffic Accident Research Team not only studies crashed cars, it also investigates driving scenarios including driver behaviour in order to learn more about what can lead to hazardous traffic situations.
"With more and more advanced technology, we design cars that help the driver avoid accidents and hopefully also avoid exposure to dangerous situations," says Jan Ivarsson. To further address traffic incidents that might lead to accidents, Volvo has introduced a new strategy that includes a broader view of safety than the traditional focus on accidents. Even if the technology to design a collision-free traffic environment is not in place yet, the safety experts at Volvo says they know what they want to achieve.

At the Volvo Car Corporation, the vision is to design cars that should not crash. In the shorter perspective the aim is that by 2020 no-one should be killed or injured in a Volvo.

"We don't accept that people lose their lives in airplane accidents, so why should we regard car accidents as inevitable?" says Jan Ivarsson, head of Safety Strategy at the Volvo Car Corporation.

Based on the data commercial flights are much safer than driving and driving is much safer in a Volvo ;0)…… although some drivers seem to see the no deaths ambition as a challenge …

 

You can only design out a certain level of danger……most crashes aren’t due to mechanical failure or failure of safety features…… no amount of design can prevent stupidity….it’s the nut losse behind the wheel that is the greatest contributor to road trauma.
Maybe one day the authorities will actually realise the proper driver training is going to be the greatest improvement to road safety…. I won’t be holding my breath waiting!

At one stage I was a marine safety inspector/ surveyor for the state government authority responsible.
They were part of the transport department, the same overseeing department that is in charge of road safety
The thing is that before they would let me drive their car I had to do an advanced drivers course….fair enough!
I was quite happy to chuck someone else’s car around a race track and get may days pay to do so.
But curiously I asked them why they thought they needed to do that…… the response was “ We have less accidents when our drivers do the course” now remember this is the government department that deals with transport safety…..when I asked then why isn’t everyone trained to the same standard……..all I got in reply was an embarrassed silence and a quick change of subject!
Which was pretty well the answer I was expecting.

 

In my last reply I began to realize, there are probably more cars in the US alone than there are flights every year. I don't think that changes the rate of accidents or incidents being what they are.

In the reply before that I gave the scenario of a person flying 300 times a year and only riding in a car five times a year. They're likelihood of being I'm involved in an aircraft incident is much higher than an average person. But I don't think we mean to talk about the individual statistic.

I mean, sure, if you want to argue that if we put untrained or questionably trained people in aircraft that incidents would increase, I don't think that can be argued. That's not the point though. Air travel exists. Vehicle travel exists. The training, experience, technology, logistic support, etc. are vastly different. One could say if we adopted the same strict training and certified experience requirements, and even greater technology into vehicles, that mode of travel might be safer, or at least as safe as air travel is today, but we don't, so air travel is safer than vehicle travel.

 

I fly the -800 and -900 right now…but our airline is supposed to get the Max sometime in 2025…so I guess I’ll fly a Max in the future…hope they get everything sorted out.

 

I seem to remember that the DC10 fell short of perfection itself.

 

I've always been under the impression that flying was safer than road travel and the questioning of that fact on this thread hasn't really changed that for me (though I did think about my mileage numbers*).

There's about 6 billion people on the planet but lets assume half can't afford to fly so that gives a flying population of 3 billion. Pre-panedemic commmercial flights peaked at about 38 million per yer and yet...

Contrast that to the UK (population 67million, or approx 2% of the flying population) which had 1800 road deaths last year.
The US has a population of appox 300million (10% of the world's flying population) yet it had about 42,000 road deaths.


I see it as being because of the comparitive lack of regulation of drivers.
I got my driving license 27 years ago and have not had to do any retest or refresher training in that period. It will be another 26 years before age related medicals may become an issue for me.
I could walk outside right now, get in the car and drive.
I wouldn't have to do a pre-drive check nor warm the engine up to operating temperature.
I wouldn't need a second qualified driver in the seat next to me.
I wouldnt have to contact the Ground Traffic Controller for permission to "push back" off my driveway.
I could decide which way I went (though I would go west) rather than being told I had to head west down the road, take a 90 degree left onto the next road, follow the curve, take a another 90 degree left at the war memeorial and then "hold short" when I reached the main road.
I could make my own decison when to pull out onto the "live" main road rather than waiting for final clearance to enter the main road and having to maintain a 1 mile separation between me and other traffic.
My car is over three years old so has to have a basic safety check every 12months, had I bought a new car I'd have had three years free of mandatory safety checks and could clock up as many miles or idle hours as I wished in that time.
The car has no time or mileage limited parts, merely a suggested service schedule for me to follow. I'm not required to carry on board oxygen or any fire suppression or emergency equipment (though I do).
I have had an accident (16 years ago) which resulted in a total hull loss. I wasn't barred from driving pending investigation (there was no investigation) and I was allowed to clear the crash site myself (take that Trevor Jacob).



*If you're interested;
I drove approx 12,500 miles last year, I made at least 500 journeys with at least 75% being less than 25 miles and the longest being 420 miles.
I was a passenger in another car or van for perhaps as many as 500miles, and likely did not travel as many as 100miles on buses or trams.
My driven mileage has always ended up being fairly consistent at between 12k and 14k miles per year.
In contrast, I didn't think I flew much last year making only 8 commercial flights. However these flights totalled approx 6700miles.
Looking back over the years my flight mileage has varied quite a lot as there have been years with no work travel nor any personal travel outside europe. In think the highest flight mileage year was 2010 when i flew about 18,000 miles (almost 15k of that was 8 flights over a 16 day period), I don't have the paperwork for the car I had that year (and the info has dropped off the DVLA's system) but i know i drove it a total of 38k miles over a period of 34 months.

 

How many deaths per year in commercial aviation worldwide? The numbers I've seen point to single digit number of accidents resulting in fewer than 300 lives lost per year as far back as I went, 2019 up to 2022.

 

A very wise man (dad) once told me this,"figures lie, and liars figure". Kind of makes some sense.

 

what ever that video is, it doesn’t play here

 

It’s a SNL skit about the Alaska Airlines Incident. You should be able to watch it at this link, even without a TikTok account. I just can’t embed this one
https://www.tiktok.com/@nbcsnl/video/7326471723992272174?lang=en

 

I had forgotten this one….
Pilot who tried to shut off engines says he was hallucinating on mushroom….

Now proud to say it is no longer our worst flight ……. Harsh

 

Maaan. I end up on one of these every week and always say a little prayer. I NEVER have anxiety when I board an Airbus. If you haven't seen the Netflix doc The Downfall of Boeing, give it a watch. This plug door issue is 100% related to the MCAS software issues from 2016. Its a quality culture issue within the company. I am in the defense/aerospace ecosphere as a private contractor. I visited one of my suppliers that makes plug doors ironically (not for Boeing) the day after that plug door flew off that Alaskan Air flight. Everyone was very serious and stern. Weird feeling to be in their shop that day. This is the result of late stage capitalism where corporate profits are held as a higher priority than quality.

 

Yes, no problem.
I’m not on backwater Africa

 

So your saying do not let Malaysia perform anymore subcontract work at Boeing

A plant in Malaysia, operated by Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, manufactured the faulty door plug on the 737 Max 9 jet involved in the incident

 

Damn, Arizona had almost 1300 traffic death in 2020

 

I'm not saying that at all. There was nothing wrong with the door plug itself. It wasn't installed correctly stateside into the fuselage by Spirit and it wasn't checked prior to A/C final acceptance by Boeing. Nor was FAA doing any kind of auditing. It doesn't matter where in the world a part is made. Supplier quality has flow down quality system requirements and supplier quality monitoring/audits. It's more strict than you think. Well... at functional aerospace companies anyway <cough cough>

 

Wasn't the problem due to incorrect installation at the Renton plant in Washington and not due to the construction of the plug?

Edit: Jinks

 

The former MAX program manager even walked off a flight after he purposely booked on a NG aircraft but that was switched to a MAX.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/26/former-boeing-employee-speaks-out-00142948

I'm a guy who dislikes alarmist BS. And I'm a huge aviation nerd, not afraid to fly. I even think the 787 is the best flight experience out there and wish I could fly those exclusively!
But I get the sinking feeling that with the MAX the issues are inherent in the unstable design and the quality culture at Boeing. I think these are only the beginning of a number of incidents - heavy MD-11 feels.

 

I've got a friend who is an engineer at Boeing specifically on one for the airframe components of the 787. I asked him what the fuck was going on with the safety and quality culture there after the MAX fiasco in 2016 and the subsequent documentary about it. I got a, "Look, I show up at 8am and do my work and I leave at 5pm". Like, wow... what a response.