from Hacker News

Safest Seat on a Plane

by yigit on 5/12/10, 9:09 PM with 30 comments

• by rmorrison on 5/12/10, 9:57 PM

  That's the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents...

  Ha, 20 accidents since 1971... It'd probably be more helpful to the general public for them to study which side of an ostrich it's safer to stand on.

• by mjfern on 5/13/10, 3:03 AM

  It's amazing to me how much hysteria there is in the media when a plane crashes, even a smaller aircraft, while little attention is paid to the number of injuries and fatalities caused by automobile accidents.

  According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, over 37,000 people died in traffic crashes in the United States in 2008, which makes car accidents the 10th leading cause of death. To put this in perspective, this number of deaths is equivalent to 265 fully loaded Boeing 737 crashing, or one every business day of every year.

  And how about non-fatal injuries from auto accidents? Over 2.5 million drivers and passengers (the same number of people living in the four states of Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, and Alaska) were injured in 2008. This makes traffic crashes the third leading cause of non-fatal injuries.

  Of the injuries caused by traffic crashes, over 10% (or over 250,000) are incapacitating, in which the injury prevents the injured person from walking, driving, or normally continuing the activities the person was capable of performing before the injury occurred.

  In sum, in a 10 year window about 1% of the total US population is either killed or seriously injured in a car accident.

• by Bjoern on 5/12/10, 11:30 PM

  One thing which this article forgot was that also the position of the emergency exit relative to your sitting place is important. If you don't sit in the max. range of 7 rows [1] to it, you are likely to not survive a crash due to people blocking each other, smoke and fire.

  [1] http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/how-to-survive-a...

• by arch_hunter on 5/12/10, 11:15 PM

  They say that the seats in the back are more safe, presumably because fewer people die in them, but are not the seats in the back usually only filled if the plane is full? The plane would have to be somewhat full in order for someone in the back of the plane to die in a crash. I am not saying that their data is completely wrong, as I am not sure what their methodology was, but it is at least suspect.

• by joubert on 5/12/10, 10:11 PM

  It'd be more useful to know which is the safest seat in a car, SUV, bus.

• by mdh on 5/12/10, 11:23 PM

  "that had both fatalities and survivors..."

  Is this saying that they only considered crashes where at least 1 person survived and at least 1 died? If so, doesn't this change the analysis from 'given you will be in a plane crash, how can you reduce your likelihood of dying?' to 'given that you will be in a plane crash and SOMEONE will survive, how can you increase the likelihood that it is you?'

  I suspect the quotes at the beginning of the article are principally about the former question (and are probably correct in that context).

• by westbywest on 5/12/10, 10:17 PM

  It's unclear to me what use this information has to anyone, not mention the potential ethical concerns of trying to promote this kind of research under the guise of airline safety awareness.

  Sure, I can believe that seats toward the rear of an aircraft tend to fair better in crashes. It's actually rather obvious, hence the decision to place the data recorders in the tail.

  However, what use is this research to the vast majority of travelers who have limited choice in where they may sit on a flight? Doesn't this sort of research suggest telling such travelers, "well it sucks to be you, doesn't it?" And what about the airlines' need to fill as many seats as possible meet their bottom lines?

• by metaguri on 5/13/10, 1:05 AM

  I remember reading once that on military planes, everyone sits backwards because that is safer. I wonder if it is true?

• by fjabre on 5/12/10, 11:48 PM

  There's been only one fatal jet crash in the U.S. in the last five-plus years

  That can't be right.

• by nowsourcing on 5/12/10, 10:16 PM

  Quantas never crashed.