Hmmmm - we have definitely improved safety over the last 20 years but most of the low hanging fruit has been picked by innovations such as TCAS and GPWS.
Fatalities per passenger mile have fallen consistently year on year but the number of fatal accidents has stagnated simply because the number of flights has grown. In other words we are a lot safer but we still have accidents grabbing the headlines.
The problem now is that the easier things have been fixed and we are left with the rare outlyers. The causes are varied and complex, often involving human factors.
The days of inventing a gadget to eliminate a risk are gone, we now need to tackle the unintended consequences of the technology which has improved safety.
To take a current example, there is a real risk that encouraging more hand flying could degrade safety rather than improving it. Nobody knows the answers to such questions.
Last edited by The Ancient Geek; 1st Apr 2016 at 22:58.