are we reaching the end of an safety era?
One thing I've often wondered about is the complexity of todays aircraft such that the drivers are in over their heads. Thinking of the likes of the QF A330 that had a mind of its own and ATSB were unable to source the root cause, and the BA 747 at Jo'burg where some of the LE retracted during take off, a latent system logic failure that hadn't made itself known previously. It's not like the piston days where a handle in the cockpit operated some gizmo somewhere in the airframe through mechanical means without interlocks.
You only need to read Tech Log to see confusion that reigns on certain system aspects, currently the 737 STS.