Innovation is Not Worth it

Human lives are more important than money. Most would say this, but when it comes to aviation there seems to be a disconnect to the rest of society. It takes a lot of money to build a plane that meets our expectations, a plane that blows us out of this world is going to be costly to the extreme. People seem to think death is a natural consequence of innovation. When in reality it doesn’t have to be if planes are built to either reach     

Venture capitalists are calling death a natural consequence of innovation. They compare a human life to their monetary value when discussing the risks. They say that the way the government puts value on human life is too high. Right now the value of life statistic(VSL) is $12.5 million dollars, it’s supposed to be the average amount of money an American makes in their life. The opposition claims that this is too high because as the Federal Aviation Administration calculates the possible amount of money lost if a plane crashes the number becomes extraordinarily high causing the FAA to pass regulation even if just one plane is saved.  They say this price encourages the FAA to enact laws that contain insanely hard to reach goals and that it’s halting innovation. From their perspective the risk of death isn’t worth the high cost of investing. They compare aviation regulation to the regulation controlling cars being extremely loose. 

First of all innovation doesn’t have to be deadly, at all. The Airbus A380 has the highest passenger capacity we’ve ever seen. Yet it still has no fatalities associated with it. We still haven’t been able to fully utilize the aircraft. Only major international airports with long runways and large enough fuel networks can handle it. There is no reason to develop larger aircrafts because we have a large aircraft we just don’t use it. Other areas of innovation like speed and fuel efficiency are different. But we had planes like the Concorde that ended up being phased out due to noise pollution, fuel efficiency, and costs. It had one major crash caused by debris on the runway, not even caused by mechanical failure, and it was abandoned. The article argues that we encourage manufacturers to just re-release previous versions. Yes, we do but for a good reason. We know that the fundamental mechanics of that aircraft work safely so why change it? Improving the Concorde or A380 is safer because they haven’t failed us. Starting over would only lead to more costs, testing, regulation and death. No one is arguing against improvements, we are arguing against innovation for the sake of being new, not improving.

Putting a human life to a monetary value is necessary but it shouldn’t be the only factor. Each human life is important, everybody deserves a chance to go about life without the fear of dying. While it is important when discussing the economy we can’t separate the idea that a human’s life doesn’t deserve to be cut short for innovation, especially passengers who are unaware. We live in a world run by money and we are building machines that take a lot of labor. The expectation that it will be easy or cheap is unrealistic. Lowering expectations isn’t going to make building good planes easier, it’s going to make building bad planes easier. The consequences of valuing life lower than it already is could be detrimental to society. A person is a person with their own life experiences, family, job and goals no matter if you are in their life or not. We can’t separate that even in scenarios where logic is the main component.

Comparing aviation to cars is unfair and disrespectful, planes were developed to be amazing feats of engineering. Taking that and saying we should treat plane regulation like we treat our regulation on cars taints the reputation we have built. We have idolized airplanes as a society for years, when the Boeing 747 was first released in the 1970s she was crowned “The Queen of the Skies.” Seeing a 747 was a major event, she sparked a joy in people with her size and luxurious design. Airplanes aren’t supposed to be mediocre, they have to symbolize the hard work put into creating them. 

Our safety record with aviation is one to uphold. Planes carry so many more people in one trip so when they fail it is so much more devastating. We can’t treat them like a car that only carries about four people. Behind the wheel you are also in control of your vehicle or you trust the person who is. But when you get on a plane you have never met the pilot. Despite this you know that they have gone through years of training to be in the position they are in. Almost anyone could go out and drive a car. Most people could easily get a license. Even if you are the best driver there is still an enormous chance you could be in a car accident. We have reasons to be so strict on planes, especially commercial, we have set a safety record that people trust in. Without that trust commercial aviation is nothing.

So no we should not encourage the government to ease up on policies slowing down innovation. There is way too much risk associated with doing so and lowering the cost of a human life to fit investors standards is dangerous. No one expects that they will be on the next plane that crashes, because it happens so little, we need to keep it that way. Opening the door for sketchy companies to make the planes we need to keep us safe is a recipe for disaster.         

Innovation is beautiful when done properly it changes the world. It is extremely counter intuitive to slow innovation because it’s important, but only when it’s a true improvement. As of now we haven’t improved the simple technologies and behaviors that make innovation possible. Eventually we will reach a point where our pilots have more training, our policy is enforced and our current technology is fixed but those things have to happen for any innovation to be an improvement.

References

Safety Versus Innovation: It’s time for a rebalancing. Aerospace America. (2023, June 27). https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/departments/safety-versus-innovation-its-time-for-a-rebalancing/

Departmental guidance on valuation of a statistical life in economic analysis. U.S. Department of Transportation. (n.d.). https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-policy/revised-departmental-guidance-on-valuation-of-a-statistical-life-in-economic-analysis