Evening star., 1950-10-15

senger would have to fly 8 hours
a day, 40 hours a week, at 200
miles per hour for 1874 years to
cover 80.84O,744 miles"
| This is either enlightening or
frightening.
Question could be raised as to
whether a closer-to-home ex-
ample would suffice, such as:
1T is much safer flying the sched-
uled airline than smoking in bed"
Other amazing statistical pres
entations seriously advanced to
get over the true story of sched-
uled airline safety include:
Plane miles flown per fatal ac-
cident registered an outstanding
900 per cent increase-from TO-
754 ,612 in 1888 to 108.175,O0O in
1949."
Plane miles per passenger
fatality jumped practically 100
per cent-from 2,352,714 in 1898
to 1852 2,698 in 1949," and
For the 12-month period end
ing August 81, 1850, the sched-
uled airlines few 9,578,873, 900
passenger miles" CA passenger
mile is one passenger carried one
mile)
The statistician can continue
indefinitely with recitations of
such salient facts or until the
prospect cries: Enough. They
are fine statistics, but I don't want
to be statistic"
Tell him, then, that it is safer
to travel on the scheduled airlines
(and for the sake of the common
carrier transportation industry as
a whole), the railroad trains and
the cross-country buses, because
more people get killed:
l. Fooling around in their
homes with "unloaded" firearms.
2. Riding home in friends au-
tomobile in the early hours of a
rainy Sunday morning after a big
party celebrating Saturday night.
3. Jumping off boats and docks
into deep water to show off SWIM
ming ability.
4. Going down dark stairs popu-
lated with brooms and mops and
a sleeping cat, into an unlighted
basement.
Goal: Perfection
S. Hastily gulping solid or liquid
poisons in the middle of the night
because they were in the medicine
cabinet and were mistaken for
life-perpetuating preparations.
Tell him. too, that the National
Safety Councils new 1850 Acct
dent Facts book shows $1,000
people died from all kinds of acci-
dents in 1949, of which 31,500I
were attributed to motor vehicle
accidents and $1,000 people died
as the result of accidents in their
homes.
At the last annual meeting of
the American Statistical Associa-
ton, an august body now headed
by Lowell j. Reed Of Johns Hop
kins University, the delegates
tackled the growing problem of
how better to portray the travellers
choice of figuring In transporta-
ton accident. 1t became very in
volved. In desperation, one sta
tistical delegate finally gained the
floor and proposed that the public
would be properly impressed If it
had statistics on the number of
airline hostesses who had lived
to a ripe age and married million
aires.
Intending no offense to the stat
isticians, q renowned safety expert
on a later occasion proclaimed the
aim of the air transport industry
to be:
"No fatal accidents; perfection
must be our goal. Marvellous air
safety statistics must be ignored
because the public, being mentally
conditioned to fear flying, Is not
impressed by them"
That was Jerome Lederer, an
active aeronautical engineer for
Is years director of Flight Safety
Foundation. non-profit inde-
pendent research group, and re-
Gently appointed director of the
newly established Gugg en- helm
Aviation Center at Cornell Uni
versity to coordinate aviation
safety research. His declaration
was made in connection with a
special award to him "for his out
standing contributions in engi-
neering for flight safety and for
his untiring efforts to encourage
research in this field" from the
Institute of the Aeronautical Sci
ences, Americas representative
aeronautical scientific society of
10000 engineers and specialists.