And... is this (the regulations and standards) good or bad? It is good if you compare the number of air and car accidents before there were "regulatory licenses" and "industry standards" and now
Not an expert, but I hear that one of the effects has been to slow down innovation.
Because a newly designed plane (with a rescue parachute, and a modern engine) is so much more expensive than one from the 1950s (leaded gas, possibly with grandfathered certification) everyone keeps flying the old ones. Cars have had many iterations on safety since the '55 Chevy, but planes not so many.
The whole FAA/EASA cert process is burdensome, but it is worth noting that the aviation industry has an impressive safety record. It is not at all comparable to the safety of a '55 chevy.
_Commercial aviation_ has a stellar safety record. The safety record for private and general aviation flying is pretty atrocious, and non-airline commercial operations (part 91, part 135) have varying levels of safety somewhere in between.
I think there can be little argument against the assertion that modernizing the general aviation fleet would improve safety. The majority of GA aircraft are using 60's technology carburetted reciprocating engines and running on leaded gasoline, and the cockpit is mostly analogue gauges with mechanical vacuum-driven gyros. Every car manufactured since the 90's uses fuel injection, yet GA pilots still need to worry about carburetor icing. That's not even going into other modern safety improvements like digital autopilot or ballistic recovery parachutes.
> It is good if you compare the number of air and car accidents before there were "regulatory licenses" and "industry standards" and now
But for this comparison to make sense you need to assume that the counterfactual scenario involves zero decrease in air and car accidents between then and now.
This beggars belief; people seek to avoid accidents for other reasons than "regulators frown on them".
It might beggar belief but it seems to be supported by data. Motor vehicle deaths per capita only started consistently dropping in the mid seventies.[1]
> that's also doubling from an average ~5,000mi travelled per capita in 1970 to ~10,000mi.
More than that; the chart shows fatalities per vehicle mile starting at their all-time high and falling steadily thereafter. Exactly like you'd expect if people were trying to avoid fatalities. Nothing special happens in 1970, where fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled have already fallen to 4.7 from, say, 21 in 1923.
47 years in the other direction, fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2017 are 1.16, a decline of 75.5% compared to the previous 47 years' 77.4%.
You're indeed right. Though, I'm not sure how you disentangle effects from shifts in public policy and legal frameworks over that entire time span. My guess is: people died -> loved ones were upset -> political and commercial pressure mounted -> improvements were made.
It might be that commercial interests often align with public safety and perception, but I bet that on the lower-end of the price spectrum, people would be willing to buy cars that endangered themselves and others. If only for lack of options.
I find it funny that people still believe that, in the midst of this pandemic where a decent chunk of the population (10-20-30%?) completely ignore public guidelines or even their best interest.
