Dirty Hipsters said:
Plus, if your jet crashes it's pretty much guaranteed instant death with no suffering, which is way better than crashing in a car, getting stuck, and burning to death.
Hell naw ...
Depends on the length of the flight to be honest. The more hours in the air, the more likely you are to pass open bodies of water. The more open water you fly over, the increased likelihood of actually drowning to death, not simply going up in a fireball of wreckage
Even then, suffocation remains a big killer in jet aircraft incidents. If you're in a situation where yu canb burn to death, you're in a situation where you'll die by smoke inhalation, after all. In fact, Boeing did a study back in 1971 that suggested that if you want to survive a catastrophic commercial jetliner incident, you should be seated towards the rear of the jet ... and you are 40% more likelier to survive than if you were sitting in the bow compartments.
So with margins that large, impact deaths alone are not as high as one may think.
Of course, the question remains whether you'll want to survive the impact after you take into account death by smoke inhalation or death by persistent crushing. Which is oddly likely to happen to 'survivors' as well. You want to know what also measureably increases your chances of survival? Wearing reinforced ppe gear. Heavy jeans, jacket, and boots. Less likely to cut yourself to ribbons when you or first responders try to dig you out of a wreck.
(edit) A lot of people hurt themselves and kill themselves in the advent of a plane crash. Basically youhave about 30 seconds before a plane that put down in an ocean, lake or river begins to fill with water or smoke. This is why being within a few rows of the emergency exits increase survival. The faster you can get away from an accident, the better. Of course, given twisted heaps of metal and plastic tend to tear flesh, so many people end up with life threatening injuries AFTER impact.
Not only that, but people are idiots. They willingly ignore the things that would otherwise save them. How to brace. Where's the life jacket.
Buckle their seat belts when told. The 15 survivors of the TransAsia downing in Taiwan survived (including a
toddler) because they followed instructions and knew how to properly brace for impact.
There is a reason why they drill the shit out of you to do this stuff in the armed forces. How to properly brace, etc. It saves lives and reduces injury. Reducing injury and saving more lives goes on to save
more lives by less people putting themselves in danger to help others who would have been more danger prone by not following instruction. There's a sort of 'cascading failure' with panic and general chaos. Where things are made exponentially worse with merely small increments of additional problems layered ontop of eachother.
This is why you end up with miracle stories in the first place. Where statistical odds don't adequately reflect the reality of an incident. Solely because people have that rare confluence when they do all the right things and thus, miracle on the surface, but beneath that merely the correct course of actions taken that limit injury, and thus maximise all possible agency of people and the effectiveness of the options available.
This is why FAA analysts still say that 90% of lethal jetliner accidents are
survivable. As in there is a guarantee there would be survivors if all passengers followed the safety instructions freely on offer. That's not to say that if you do, you will survive. But that your chances of survival are far, far, far higher if you do. Not only that, your ability to survive is also maximised when you have a person behind do all the right things as well. When that seatbelt warning light goes on, it's not just your safety on the line. Other people are counting on you doing the right thing also to increase their odds of survival.
