Boing Boing posted an article today For once, news about why we're safer than we used to be - Boing Boing
"That was seven years ago. I bring up this story now because American 587 was the last fatal crash on U.S. shores involving a full-size jetliner. That is an incredible run, and for some reason it is almost never talked about. Seven years of a perfect track record is more than just a statistical anomaly; we have clearly taken what has always been a safe form of transportation and made it into a staggeringly safe mode of transportation. In an age where we are bombarded by fear media at every turn -- from the household menaces of local nightly news ("Something in your kitchen may be killing your children -- tune in at eleven for more!") to the endless scaremongering about international terrorism, you'd think there would be an appetite for news about how ordinary life just got a lot safer"
"So it was heartening to see in my hotel copy of USAToday that the latest good news -- zero fatalities on any US commercial aircraft in the past two years, a first in our jet age history -- managed to get on the front page."
And today US Airways flight 1549 from LaGuardia crashed into the Hudson River. "There were 146 passengers on board the flight, along with 5 crew members. There is no report on their conditions."
A commenter on the Boing Boing post wrote: "How about tomorrow you write about how great it is that an asteroid hasn't hit the Earth?"
Update: There's more at the Wall Street Journal. There's a photo of lots of passengers on the wings of the plane in the water and " It was not immediately clear if there were injuries." Maybe the article will be less ironic, hopefully still no fatalities on a plane flight.
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