Its pretty clear reading the article that the public now has a much higher safety standard than the FAA did internally.
Flying has become so safe that the public no longer considers it risky, but the FAA never updated its targets. So when Boeing wanted to trade safety for market share there was no basis to stop them.
To illustrate the change in attitude it used to be common for airports to sell life insurance for the flight directly at the gate. This continued as late as the 1980s.
I feel your example just illustrates that the public has always thought flying is more dangerous than it actually is. No one would be selling life insurance if flying was as dangerous as the people buying the insurance thought it was.
The FAA set a standard that makes flying way safer than driving, a risk people happily undertake all the time, but people still overestimate the risk of flying and demand more safety improvements.
Yea, but the parent commenter was discussing the _public's_ risk tolerance for flying.
The fact that life insurance was being sold, meant the flying public _thought_ they were taking significant risks (even if they weren't).
Now, such life insurance would be laughable, which means the public _does not_ think it's taking any risks. The general public's risk tolerance for flying has dropped dramatically.
So, based on that, it seems the example perfectly demonstrates the point. The public thinks flying is much less of a risk now than it used to.
Though, presumably the FAA's tolerance for risk has also dropped tremendously over the past several decades, so I feel like the more relevant comparison is the perceived risk to the actual risk.
Although the public thinks the risk it's taking is much smaller, it still vastly overestimates the danger of flying.
I agree completely that the public thinks flying is a lot safer than they used to, which is a change, but I think they also still really overestimate the danger, which is not a change, and which I believe is borne out by the same evidence provided by the parent, people buying life insurance when it was a bad deal and people continuing to demand that the FAA make flying so much safer than activities like driving that they engage in without a second thought.
I'm also not so sure that a lot of people wouldn't still buy life insurance at the gate if it was available.
Flying has become so safe that the public no longer considers it risky, but the FAA never updated its targets. So when Boeing wanted to trade safety for market share there was no basis to stop them.
To illustrate the change in attitude it used to be common for airports to sell life insurance for the flight directly at the gate. This continued as late as the 1980s.
https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/a...