
Excess Automobile Deaths as a Result of 9/11 - CapitalistCartr
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/excess_automobi.html
======
chimeracoder
> The inconvenience of extra passenger screening and added costs at airports
> after 9/11 cause many short-haul passengers to drive to their destination
> instead

"Inconvenience" is putting it mildly. Even before my recent experiences with
airport security[0], I preferred to drive or take the train for short
distances (NYC to Boston, Philly, DC, etc.). As one can imagine, that aversion
has only increased.

Nate Silver puts this well:

> According to the Cornell study, roughly 130 inconvenienced travelers died
> every three months as a result of additional traffic fatalities brought on
> by substituting ground transit for air transit. _That’s the equivalent of
> four fully-loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year._ [1]

Emphasis mine.

[0] Previously submitted to HN, but for the lazy:
[http://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/post/59021412512/dont-
fly-...](http://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/post/59021412512/dont-fly-during-
ramadan) [1][http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/the-
hidd...](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/the-hidden-costs-
of-extra-airport-security/?_r=0))

~~~
GrinningFool
Since the new "security measures" have gone into place. I've instituted a 12-
to 14-hour rule: if I can get somewhere by driving there in less than 12 (to
14) hours, I'll drive.

As a tall person, a plane has always been uncomfortable for me. Add to that
experience the long security lines and being treated like cattle... nah. It
costs me more, but I'll drive.

~~~
rdl
If you had a self-driving EV such that a drive cost you duration of sitting in
a comfortable chair with high-speed internet, a refrigerator full of drinks,
and maybe $50, how far upward would you revise this?

I'd probably seriously consider commuting weekly or biweekly from central WA
to SFBA, even if it took 20h. 10h would be nothing, as I could just sleep.

~~~
btilly
As a tall person who is prone to motion sickness, not one bit. If I so much as
looked at that screen, I'd be ill.

I have a feeling that as time goes on, this will be seen as more and more of a
handicap instead of a minor inconvenience.

~~~
1123581321
If transportation changes to where most people will need to be comfortable in
those situations, getting over motion sickness will be like getting your "sea
legs" or accommodating to Zero G. You will just have to have a few unpleasant
trips until you get used to the sensations. Sorry!

~~~
btilly
I cannot explain how infuriating it is that you'd have the gall to assume that
"a few unpleasant trips" would solve the problem. If I could I would give you
the experience of feeling nauseous for several hours after making the mistake
of playing a first person shooter or reading directions to the driver in a
moving car. Maybe after you experienced that you'd understand that the issue I
have is not simply, "Get sick a few times and you'll stop complaining about
it.

~~~
rdl
Somehow this used to really bother me when I was 4-8 years old, and then it
stopped. I don't know if that's normal. Being directly in-line with the
direction of travel mattered then, too (now I can sit sideways in an aircraft
doing a combat spiral landing and not get sick). I don't think "doing it a few
times" is what stopped it for me, it was probably some morphological change as
I grew up.

Presumably you've tried medication? It would probably be horrible to have to
take transdermal scopolamine fairly continually, though.

~~~
btilly
Dramamine works for me. Of course use of that is not conducive to performing
any complex activities.

I'm aware that motion sickness can change as people grow up. But given that
I'm in my 40s, the odds of "growing out of it" are rather dim.

~~~
rdl
From watching people on boats, transderm scop is less likely to cause
tiredness than the oral antihistamines.

------
pre
After the tube-bombings in London a friend's mom offered to buy him a car so
he didn't have to get the tube and risk being blown up.

Ha.

He refused (mostly to spare her the cost I think) while pointing out that
would have been a good way to increase the chances of him dying while
traveling.

~~~
bloat
I am (irrationally) afraid of flying, but I try and counteract it by telling
myself, when I get out of the car at the airport, "Phew, that's the dangerous
part of the journey over with."

~~~
mhb
That depends on how far you drive to the airport versus how far your plane
trip is.

~~~
netrus
I'd guess the distance of the flight is not that important, because risk is
mostly constant (one take off, one landing).

If you can choose to drive instead of to fly, however...

~~~
cjrp
In fact, shorter flights may carry more risk with the regional pilots that
operate them typically having less flying experience and a higher likelihood
of suffering from fatigue.

------
hobb0001
Security theater. _sigh_ If the government was actually serious about
protecting women and children from people with malicious intent, terrorists
would be toward the bottom of the list, just above school shooters. Domestic
abuse far outstrips any news-worthy outrages, but you don't get many votes
talking about that.

~~~
lukifer
Security theater to treat criminal violence theater. It makes a perverse sort
of sense.

Terrorism is not really about deaths; there are many greater causes of
preventable death, as you note. It's about attacking a nation's _perception_
of safety. You can ignore another random car accident or drug-related murder,
but it's much harder to ignore 9/11.

I'd much prefer the vaccine to the "cure": to educate ourselves on this tactic
and refuse to play along, treating terrorism the way we would treat a natural
disaster. But alas, there's too much money and power to be gained in the
security theater racket, and power abhors a vacuum.

------
brudgers
We tend to accept that death has a color [1]. Unfortunately, we tend to let
our governments decide which deaths have what color. No doubt the 500 or so US
residents who died each year as a result of actions following 9/11 constitutes
many individual tragedies. But there have been many many more colorless deaths
around the world as a result of other government actions with 9/11 as their
rationalization.

[1] [http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

~~~
lostlogin
There might have been many due to other government actions, but the vast
majority are surely attributable to the US government. What's a few hundred
thousand deaths when they are Muslim though?

------
mathattack
From the comments:

 _Another good illustration: In the past 20 years total, deer have killed more
on American soil (~150-200 /yr) than terrorists. So where is the trillion
dollar War on Bambi?_

~~~
refurb
That's a ridiculous comment. The commentor is comparing the numbers of deaths
that occurred over 20 years to the number of deaths that occurred during a
single morning on 9/11?

~~~
betterunix
Major terrorist attacks are extremely rare in America. They were rare before
9/11 and they have been rare since. Deer hits, on the other hand, are common
and cause extensive damage to vehicles and injuries to drivers.

Also, there is a war on deer, but we prefer to call it "hunting." Hunting
regulations are designed to cull the deer population, particularly in areas
where natural predators were killed off by humans long ago. Hunting
regulations balance the need to keep the deer population down with the need to
not drive deer into extinction. It might make sense to bump up the number of
kills allowed per hunter per season or to make the seasons longer if
automobile hits are a serious enough problem (there are still more deer now in
many eastern states than there were when the colonies were first established).

~~~
freehunter
Around where I live if there were not enough deer killed in the regular
hunting season, the DNR will open a late season to bring the numbers in line
with conservation figures. Deer population conservation is a highly regulated
and very important activity since there are so many humans living in areas
where deer congregate, and we have been incredibly effective in wiping out
their natural predators.

------
downandout
An interesting tidbit in the post is that DHS values each life at $6.5
million. Since most people do not have a net worth that high, and will never
earn anywhere near that much in their lifetimes, it really makes me wonder
where they get these numbers. While any loss of life is tragic, that loss
rarely represents a financial loss of $6.5 million to the economy - even if
you take earning potential into account.

~~~
cynicalkane
Are you actually expressing confusion that the value of a life is higher than
its discounted cash flow?

------
chatman
I don't understand why this post is featured on HN. It is just commentary on a
previous essay, and doesn't even sound like a comprehensive commentary; just a
few observations.

~~~
timdiggerm
Bruce Schneier.

------
ds9
"since airline travel is far safer than car travel" \-- source quoted by
Schneier

This old line has been exaggerated because people make a fallacious
comparison. Ask whether people _feel_ safer driving or flying, and many will
say driving - this may still be statistically wrong, but it is intuitively
based on the correct comparison.

The comparison people intuitively make is "events I can't control in each
alternative", while the fallacious-debunkers compare _total casualties_. But
_almost all_ of the plane casualties are beyond the traveler's control, while
on the other hand he/she can make sure the car is in good condition, drive
while alert, obey speed limits and so on. The plane casualty number may still
be lower than the corrected car casualty number, but not nearly by as much as
is sometimes claimed.

~~~
blackhole
You can't control other drunk drivers, either.

~~~
GrinningFool
It does always take two people to get in a [two vehicle] collision. You can't
control the other driver, but you can control how you react - and usually
whether you've seen them coming in time to do so.

Sometimes it's unavoidable - you're stopped at a light and someone crosses the
median to plow into you. In that situation, you are screwed.

But often, there is something you as the not "at fault" party could have done
to avoid the collision (even with the drunk driver), had you been paying
attention enough to see the situation. Change lanes. Slow down. Speed up.
Leave more room. Leave less room. Always, no matter what, be _looking_.

Once I prevented myself from getting rear-ended at a traffic light: I was
stopped and saw someone coming up behind me way too fast. I leaned on my horn,
they clued in, and braked in time to stop just touching my fender. (I was in a
motorcyle at a time, so REALLY happy with the outcome.)

Again, sometimes it really is unavoidable - but in a surprising number of
situations there are actions a driver can take to avoid or reduce the severity
of the incident.

Insurance companies understand this - that's why your rates raise when you get
in an accident, regardless of whether you're legally "at fault".

Driving well and alertly doesn't end at the bounds of legal fault. Sure if you
were rear-ended someone else will pay damages - but if you're in a wheelchair
or dead, that money isn't going to make things better.

So to GP's point: there are a LOT of things that are far more under your
control when you're driving. Falling out of the sky... not so much.

~~~
klinquist
Indeed- I teach car control clinics, and it's alarming how many people simply
freeze when put in a panic situation behind the wheel.

~~~
viraptor
At some point the high rate is just called "normal". I would expect that
majority of people freeze. And unless we're all trained in specific situations
and see the situation perfectly and have a good reflex and ... there will be
no reaction. And how would we prove that any kind of reaction is better than
none?

~~~
klinquist
You don't have to be trained to see the situation perfecty or even trained in
a specific situation. It is possible to train you brain to still function in a
panic situation and try _something_. You can think about whether that was the
right action at a later time.

I've had people tell me "I don't even remember the last 60 seconds" after
inducing a spin in a vehicle. It's a scary thought.

------
sklivvz1971
I'm one of the "people that commented" and the thread is here:
[http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/17578/96](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/17578/96)

------
jacquesm
To really properly balance this you'd have to compare with a world where the
TSA does not exist. But we don't actually have the possibility to compare the
two. Chances are (not saying this is the case) that the combined haul of what
the TSA found during the last decade would have led to more deaths. Controlled
experiments on this scale are unfortunately not possible so in the end it all
boils down to what you wish to believe most or what seems to be most
reasonable.

~~~
HarryHirsch
In Europe we had a rash of airplane hijackings in the 1970s and 1980s,
onsequently there is plenty of institutional experience in how to deal with
terrorism and aircraft.

We chose not to plump for the TSA groping squad. Neither should the US.

~~~
anigbrowl
There were also quite a lot of hijackings in the US during that period. But
none of them ended as badly as 9-11, so it's not a terribly meaningful
comparison.

~~~
HarryHirsch
I wouldn't say the comparison was meaningless. The blood toll of Entebbe and
Landshut was less, but the public impact was enormous.

One must keep the public mood in the back of one's head - this was in 1977,
there was a series of attacks by the Red Army Faction, which everyone had
thought was dead, and then, just as now, there was the discussion about
dragnet surveillance and civil liberties, there was even discussion about the
aims of the RAF, perhaps they even had a point.

The keyword is "Deutscher Herbst".

------
devx
I bet a lot of people chose driving over flying not just because they're
afraid of having their planes hijacked, but also because of the TSA and not
wanting to deal with them.

~~~
ds9
Exactly. The Xray scanners (now pulled), the offensive groping, the
authoritarian attitudes, the long delays - I'm sure I saw some numbers showing
big declines in the airline industry from late 2001, and undoubtedly few
Americans today think terrorism is a big threat, but no one likes the TSA.

------
coldcode
This just shows you that security is always a trade-off, whether in your
application or in life in general. People rarely consider the true cost of a
change in security policy.

~~~
crististm
Yes, but the TSA added inconvenience does not directly result in visible added
safety.

~~~
Amadou
It is probably more correct to say, "Everything in life is a trade-off."

------
JackFr
I read the original Cornell paper which attempted show the effect of security
measures on demand for air travel
([http://dyson.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/gb78/wp/airport_secur...](http://dyson.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/gb78/wp/airport_security_022305.pdf)),
and frankly I didn't find it very compelling. But even were one to accept its
conclusion that security measures (and not an economic downturn or a change in
preference due to a _percieved_ risk) caused the change in demand, no one
presents any evidence that the air travel was replced with car travel. It
seems quite likely that many trips would have been simply forgone, or along
the BOS-NY-WAS corridor replaced with the train.

------
jweir
Why does the Wikipedia article show a steady decline of fatalities? And this
is occurring in a growing population.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

~~~
lingben
you answered yourself, the decline is in fatalities per capita

~~~
Someone
It also is in absolute number of fatalities, since 2002, except for 2005.

------
toblender
I first heard about this from the book, the "Science of Fear". It's
unfortunate that fear of something like flight, can lead to death by other
means.

------
api
Our irrationality in the face of minor but "scary" risks (vs. chronic ones) is
brilliant for Schneier to point out -- it's really one of the pivots on which
the whole surveillance issue rests.

Throwing away our freedom to prevent rare, statistically insignificant events
is equally stupid. By doing so we are risking a much greater danger -- the
chronic danger of a corrupt and possibly deadly police state.

------
3am
This is a morbid point, but I dislike the figure of ~3K people killed in the
9/11 attacks.

If either of the towers had fallen sooner or had fallen sideways instead of
collapsing almost completely vertically, then it could have been much worse.

I'm trying to make the narrowest possible point when saying this: just that
~3K casualties was far from the worst case outcome that was possible that day.

EDIT: per my reply below, I'm only trying to make the discussion as honest as
possible. At the core is the question, "Given X casualties to air travel based
terror attacks, is a particular security policy worth implementing if it leads
to Y casualties indirectly?". I'm addressing a shortcoming in what I see as
the figure being used for X, since it's a small data set. It would be
interesting to address the effectiveness (% of attacks thwarted or
discouraged) of the security policy, too.

~~~
Symmetry
Why limit this to Air terrorism attacks then? If the first World Trade Center
attack [1] had succeeded in bringing the towers down the casualties would have
been far worse. Or if the terrorists had smuggled a nuke into New York it
would have been even worse than that.

As it stands 9/11 is actually a worse terrorist attack than can ever be
achieved with the use of airplanes again, see Flight 93. So it doesn't make
sense to consider these sorts of hypotheticals when talking about changing air
security policy.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing)

~~~
3am
"As it stands 9/11 is actually a worse terrorist attack than can ever be
achieved with the use of airplanes again, see Flight 93." I think this point
is highly debatable, though I hope we don't find out in our respective
lifetimes.

Anyway, as to why I didn't address non-air terrorism: I didn't set the scope
of the discussion, I'm just participating in it. Sadly I'm well aware of the
'93 bombing, the Bali bombings, the African embassy bombings... all sorts of
non-aircraft attacks.

I literally said in my post that I was trying to make the "narrowest possible
point". I meant it.

