Originally Posted by Pace
..... there are FAR greater demonstrated risks with a long history of fatal accidents which we do accept and think little of...........
I can point you in many areas of aviation which do hold a far higher risk element and proven risk element if you want to improve safety ......
This is true. Indeed, it is well accepted as a general phenomenon.
Before he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a book "Breaking the Vicious Circle" (Harvard U.P., 1993), based on his Oliver Wendell Holmes lectures at Harvard, in which he includes in Table 5 (pp 24-27) the risks and cost-effectiveness of U.S. federal legislation selected from Fiscal Year 1992. The cost per premature death averted ranges from $100,000 in 1990 dollars (widely regarded by many to be a bargain) to $5,700,000,000,000 (yes, you read that right). About half the measures lie over $8,000,000 per premature death averted, which is regarded by almost everybody who deals with these issues as very expensive.
Cass Sunnstein has a similar, but shorter table in Chapter 2 of his study "Risk and Reason" (Cambridge U.P., 2002), in which he says "it is well-known that there is a great deal of variability in national expenditures per life saved."
Both Sunstein and Breyer deal with the question of how to approach this and other phenomena.
So now we are agreed on this phenomenon, what is your argument to get from the phenomenon of variability of response to risk (on which we agree) to the conclusion that flight should not have been restricted (on which we don't agree)?
PBL