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Thursday President Bush was asked about whether he felt it was safe
for people to fly again. He responded that he would have no reservations
about putting his own family on a commercial plane.
Whether Americans
share that sense of confidence is another matter altogether. Americans
will undoubtedly be even more terrified of boarding an airplane
than normal — and fear of flying is one of America's national
pastimes. Even many major American corporations have banned air
travel for at least the next week or two.
But flying
is a lot safer than most Americans think. Statistically speaking,
commercial airplane crashes — whether caused by bad whether,
pilot error, air-traffic mistakes, or even hijackers — are
extremely rare.
Even accounting
for the four hijackings last week, it is still true that airplane
travel is now the safest form of transportation ever devised. In
1998, for example, there were 14 million commercial airline flights
carrying 615 million passengers. There were zero crashes and zero
fatalities. In 1999 and 2000 there were less than five in each year.
According to the research organization STATS, "your odds of
dying in a plane crash [based on recent experience from the 1990s]
and based on flying 100,000 miles a year on large commercial jets,
are about 1 in 500,000." STATS also finds that if you fly just
2,000 miles a year, your odds of dying in a plane crash are roughly
equivalent to your odds of being hit on the head by a plane falling
on you.
I have talked
to many people in recent days, including my wife, who say that they
will from now on drive or take the train, whenever they have those
options, rather than fly. This is the height of irrationality. The
death rate from flying on commercial airlines is at least four times
lower per mile traveled than driving a car. Train crashes are far
more common than airplane crashes. In other words, if you are you
are motivated by fear to drive to your out-of-town destination,
your chances of dying are much, much higher than if you fly.
But more so
than ever Americans will think that flying is dangerous because
that horrible scene of the jet slamming into the World Trade Center
is now indelibly sketched in our minds. There but through the grace
of God could have gone you or me. Yet if we are going to be frightened
of such random acts of terror — that have minute statistical
probabilities of occurring — then are we also going to fear
entering tall buildings (probably), going to a shopping mall, a
football stadium, a bus, Disney World? Are we going to fear sending
our kids to school?
To live in
such terror is to…well, allow the terrorists to accomplish
their objective: to defeat capitalism by bringing American commerce
to a standstill.
Prior to this
week, the odds of dying in a terrorist incident were far less than
the odds of dying from falling off a ladder at home or from riding
a bicycle. The rate of death from catastrophic events (accidents
killing at least five people), had fallen about threefold over the
past 50 years. You have a microscopic 1 in 400,000 chance of dying
in a catastrophic accident. This may not seem very reassuring given
that we have just suffered the worst catastrophic event on American
soil in at least 100 years. But if you are worried about premature
death, the best course of action is to stop eating, drinking, and
smoking to excess and you will do far more to extend your life span
than by avoiding flying on an airplane.
In fact, it
is precisely because acts of terrorism have been so rare in recent
times that we were so caught off guard and had become so lax in
security to allow these monsters to succeed in their dastardly deeds.
The best way to avoid future acts of terrorism is through rational
acts of prudent security and precaution and, of course, by seeking
retribution as a means of deterrence.
Whenever we
radically alter our lifestyle out of irrational fear (for example,
by driving not flying), then we often engage in more dangerous behavior,
not less. The journal Psychological Science recently found
that one risk of early death is fear itself. The journal found that
"people who catastrophize experiences suffer from poor decision
making and are more likely to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time."
In other words,
we must not allow terrorists to literally scare us to death.
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