You have completely miss understood the complaint.
The complaint is about the FAA hold passenger items after the emergnecy is over while they "investigate"
The process should be
Evac -> Fire Dept clears the plane > Airline gets passengers there stuff
it should not be
Evac > Fire Dept > NTSB Looks at things > FAA Looks at things > Someone 3 years later Passengers get their things
because the FAA as the latter policy, people will be more prone to try to take their stuff, then if they knew once evacuated they would get their belongings before leaving the airport, not at some undetermined time later
>because the FAA as the latter policy, people will be more prone to try to take their stuff
Approximately nobody in an actual emergency has any idea of the details of FAA policies or is running through their logical implications, come ON.
The reason people do stupid things is they are in shock and they revert to ingrained habits and behavior because it's really hard to do any higher level thinking at that moment.
> nobody in an actual emergency has any idea of the details of FAA policies or is running through their logical implications
It certainly occurs to me now. I'm not going to pull an overhead item. But I may be more inclined to grab my laptop if it's already in the seat in front of me.
More productively: if you can honestly say that passengers will get their onboard items within 7 days of an emergency during the in-flight safety message, maybe you'll influence behavior.
It's understandable that when confronted with an irresponsible behaviour of one particular person we tend to blame that person for being irresponsible.
But the fact is that there will be a given number of irresponsible people around.
It's also irresponsible to set up rules in such a way to make it more likely that some irresponsible people will do irresponsible things. Especially when there may be other rules that could reduce the chances.
There's also "why are you not giving people their bags promptly, you assholes".
Also important medication can get left behind, as someone else mentioned. It's worth some risk to delay for some seconds in that case, where math can tell you the exact amounts.
People worry in an emergency because they don't know what's going to happen.
People do not worry more or less because of some particular 1 in a billion billion event that happened yesterday. Well, maybe yesterday, but wait a day!
On the other hand, revising rules and regulations would have real costs for you the taxpayer.
If people regularly lose access to their belongings when there's an incident, that's not a 1 in a billion billion and a good number of people will learn about it and have it affect their behavior. If that's what the regulation says, it's going to keep happening. The premise of this conversation is that this is the regular process, right?
> On the other hand, revising rules and regulations would have real costs for you the taxpayer.
I am happy to pay the cost of revising a few paragraphs so that the regulation stops screwing people over! Don't steal people's most important bags! If that needs a rules change, it won't be a complicated one. Once the plane is safe to be on, get everyone's carry-ons within a few hours.
The complaint is about the FAA hold passenger items after the emergnecy is over while they "investigate"
The process should be
Evac -> Fire Dept clears the plane > Airline gets passengers there stuff
it should not be
Evac > Fire Dept > NTSB Looks at things > FAA Looks at things > Someone 3 years later Passengers get their things
because the FAA as the latter policy, people will be more prone to try to take their stuff, then if they knew once evacuated they would get their belongings before leaving the airport, not at some undetermined time later
FAA Policy increases the danger for everyone.