This is exactly the kind of attitudes I'm trying to find data to address - as we all should - thanks for raising it Muddy.
ZRX61 wrote:
muddyboots wrote:
It's all about perception, and a big engine with a buzz saw attached to it is going to get lots more attention (no matter how true) than a car. Everybody drives cars. They aren't scary, unless a teenager (or maybe Eric) is behind the wheel. We're used to cars. But you don't see a thousand airplanes zipping around all day with very few accidents. However, it seems like almost every time you see an airplane in the news or on TV...it's spiraling into the ground with a bunch of nuns tied to the wings, and there's a busload of challenged children singing "jesus loves me" in its trajectory. I mean, it's all about perspective and perseption, you know?
The last big loss of spectator life at a car race (IIRC) was LeMans in '55(?) when the engine of a car that had just wrecked went thru the crowd at head height with fairly predictable results. Something like 80 deaths & in the video I saw there's a rather gruesome sound not unlike someone smashing cabbages with a large mallet..
Mass fatalities have been more recent at airshows (Rammstein etc)
The last injuries to a spectator at a UK air show was the DH110 accident with John Derry in 1952 -
1952! I know 'no accident' is no news, but that's an enviable safety record, and one that can be matched by taking the same precautions as the UK requirements.
Ramstein also wasn't recent - 1988. Subsequent airshow accidents where the public have been injured have, AFAIK, occurred in countries with a limited airshow array and experience, including on the continent. (EDIT: Ukrane, 81+ killed in 2002, Germany; 1 killed, 2008 - given their relatively low number of air events, it's interesting that having more airshows is therefore literally safer than having a few...)
From the Ramstein and Derry accident, the lessons can (and have, in most places) be learned and minimise the chance to near-zero of them happening again. The airshow environment has also changed utterly since 1952 and 1988 as well - just take a look at the safety features in cars of those eras compared to today as a rough example. I don't know what the US safety record is like, again, the cardinal rule of not killing the public seems to have been held.
And following on from Muddy's post, most people's perception of aviation is of extreme danger and mass death; thanks to the actually infrequent airliner accident. (They just tend to be top TV spectacle.) One reason
we need to work hard to show people the fun and enjoyable (as well as useful) side of aviation is that the only time people see an aircraft, it's on the TV, crashing. Demonstrating basic manoeuvres or aerobatics is a big 'wow' for the vast majority of the public; something done at the RAAF Museum as part of its education mandate.
I have one friend, a highly qualified scientist who would NEVER go to an airshow because 'people die at them all the time and it's dangerous'. Another, currently re-qualifying as a teacher, who
knows aviation is dangerous and that, basically, they are held up by luck and magic. Argh.
Regards,
PS: If you don't find cars scary, you should. A fine example of 'heavy machinery' operated by m0rons.
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That's quite the self-fulfilling prophecy, and politely, I think it's also balls. 
