Evacuation , baggage and safety
The fight safety briefing is nothing of the sort. It is an emergency response briefing, but no airline will call it that. The flight deck says that the cabin crew are there primarily for “your safety”. I would argue they are nothing of the sort, otherwise they would all be wearing hi-viz vests and weapons and would obey the seat belt signs like pax do. Cabin crew are there to serve the calm pax with sustenance and advice and control the unruly pax. Why do they never sit down and belt up until FL100? Why do they serve hot drinks with the seat belt sign illuminated? Why do some pilots leave the seat belt sign on all the way from JFK to Shannon in calm air? Everyone on board disregards it after 2 hours and with good reason: either HAL has taken over the cockpit or Nigel has dozed off and forgotten to switch it off until initial decent into LHR.
A safe aircraft is one that is flown competently by an alert flight crew who fully understand how it works in all designed environments, is maintained by engineers who fully understand how to preserve design function & reverse the degradation of use, one which avoids un-flyable weather and contains pax with no malice to their fellow man. The safety briefing is redundant unless one or more of the above fails, by which time safety has been lost and an emergency prevails.
As individuals we all learn from birth how to handle emergencies depending on our own abilities and acuities and life experience. If your backside is on fire you will fight your way over Mr Jones trying to recover her duty free, as evidenced in the Manchester BA 737 in 1985.
However if the aircraft has come to rest and is damaged but evidently not life-threatening, common sense says “I will get out of here with both my backside and my backpack” because I am sure about my backside but about not my backpack.
No amount of airline brainwashing will alter that and no amount of “commander control” will influence it.
There is simply too much heavy hand baggage allowed on board, most of which ought to be diverted in the hold. The overhead lockers should be replaced with open coat racks like on trains. Mr O’Leary of course will prevent that because he sees hold baggage as an unnecessary cost.