• Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    21 days ago

    The actual answer is that the seatbelt is there to keep your ragdoll ass from bouncing off the ceiling during heavy turbulence.

  • _lilith@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    It straps you to the seat so when the plane suddenly drops 50 feet due to turbulence your dumbass doesn’t launch into the ceiling.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      Yeah, and this is a much more frequent thing than crashes. I’ve been on planes multiple times when there was sudden turbulence and people without seatbelts lifted out of their seats. I don’t think any of my personal experiences resulted in someone hitting their head, but that happens. There was just video of one earlier this year.

    • SSTF@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      I have observed that “very clever” people on the internet have a tendency to disregard solutions that are only partial, even if there is little to no downside to them.

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        “Oh yeah? Why should I be wearing a seatbelt in a car when it won’t even save me if we crash head-on into a semi truck at 100 kph?”

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        If you play the SNES version of Monopoly, you can play against CPU opponents. Mind you, this is artificial intelligence coded in 1992, on a cartridge with about 16mb of storage space for the entire game. Only a fraction of that is dedicated to the AI decision process.

        If you propose a trade, I’ll give CPU $5 in exchange for $0, the CPU will respond with NO DEAL!!!

        But if you propose "I’ll give you $100 in exchange for $0, the CPU replies “IT’S A DEAL!!!”

        The CPU was holding out for a bigger handout!

        Unrelated, but if you hold the B button, and don’t release, you’ll keep looping the shaking the dice animation. They use digital photo scans of a real hand/arm…if it were disembodied. And the animation looks like he’s just jacking off.

        • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world
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          22 days ago

          You weren’t kidding.

          Edit: I see now you said SNES, can’t find a good animation of that one though. But I can see in the screenshots that it’s a pseudo-mocap human hand and yeah, that would be worse.

        • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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          22 days ago

          Wow, talking about NES Monopoly on a post about airplane seatbelts.

          I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on NES Monopoly because I used to play the game and wanted to see if I held the B button. Probably did, but I’m not sure.

          Anyway, the world record speedrun of Monopoly takes advantage of the trade mechanics. Trade the CPU mortgaged properties for all of their money and they’ll lose the game because you have to pay a 10% fee on any properties traded that were mortgaged. And if you take all their money in the trade they don’t have any to pay the penalty.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      And when there’s a collision on ground. And when the pilot just breaks too hard after landing.

    • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      Never been on a flight never assumed I would be afraid of flying however that sounds horrific, so thanks for giving me a new fear of flying.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        Can’t really let random stuff like that with a low injury profile bother you. You’d end up fearing and respecting escalators in that case.

        Reminds me of the time the brakes gave out on the L’enfant Plaza escalator for the DC Metro after the Rally to Restore Sanity (a lot good that did). Everyone was piled on going down and it just gave up the ghost and accelerated at full speed to bring them all down in a pile.

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W5MbQaInrjc

        For reference, the DC Metro is quite deep underground.

      • dalekcaan@lemm.ee
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        22 days ago

        Don’t worry, some turbulence is par for the course but dangerous turbulence is pretty rare. Also 50 feet is an exaggeration, turbulence usually feels worse than it is. Plane rides are usually smoother than driving in a car, but flying can make you sensitive to lateral motion.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    In the event of catastrophic damage leading to explosive decompression it should keep you from being sucked out into thin air. Like if the roof tears off like that one time. Or that Boeing thing. Or that other Boeing thing. Or that other other Boeing thing.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Or keep you from bouncing and hitting the ceiling in cases of extreme turbulence. Or yo help on cases of lower-speed crashes (cases where the plane goes into some nosedive are less likely), etc.

  • slingstone@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    Stupid question here, I guess, but why isn’t there a system to potentially deliver commercial passengers and crew to the ground in case of a crash? Military jets have ejection seats and parachutes, so why don’t we have at least something required for commercial aircraft in the same vein?

    Is it the money that it would undoubtedly require?

    Edit: misspelling

    • AlotOfReading@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Throwing untrained people out of a commercial airliner at high speed in the middle of a emergency is a good way to ensure no one survives. The equipment would add a significant amount of space, fuel and maintenance burden too, and require major compromises to the aircraft design itself. All to resolve a problem that effectively never happens.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      21 days ago

      Not a stupid question.

      Between the training required for a solo parachute jump, and the cost (and more importantly) weight of the equipment, plus the relative safety of commercial flights, it’s simply not justified.

      In more than a few cases we’ve seen airliners make emergency landings that are gnarly, but the majority survive. In more cases than I can count, there’s checks and balances that ground flights because of safety concerns either at the departure point or at the destination (icing, high winds, etc), or due to mechanical concerns.

      It’s rare that a fully inspected and functional aeroplane will fall out of the sky, and we do everything in our power to ensure that all planes that leave the ground are fully inspected and functional. Short of a freak occurrence, like a fast forming weather phenomenon, there’s so many checks and balances that airliner crashes are exceedingly rare.

      So not only is a crash rare, there’s no guarantee that a crash will be fatal, usually the pilot can at least get the plane on the ground without killing everyone aboard, and the fact that it’s a massive amount of extra weight that requires training that the average person doesn’t have, there’s little point and nearly nothing to gain from doing something like that, while it would have significant downsides on flight efficiency and increase the costs of fuel per flight due to the extra weight.

      Then there’s the consideration of, even if they were able to successfully parachute to the ground, what then? It’s pretty much a guarantee that nobody has a radio, and that you’re far enough away from civilization that your cellphone doesn’t work, so now you have hundreds of people spread out over potentially thousands of miles of terrain/water/whatever that you now need weeks to search and rescue everyone. Taking weeks on search and rescue, pretty much guarantees that you’ll find people who landed safely, then died from exposure to the environment.

      On the flip side, if everyone is in the plane when it crashes then all you need to do is find the plane; everyone will be in that general area, whether alive or dead.

      There’s just too many downsides to having parachutes on board to make it feasible.

      • slingstone@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        Honestly, I do understand that ejector seats are not a good idea, but I was thinking something more like this. It’s more like a lifeboat and would be equipped as such to address the same sort of concerns a disaster at sea would require to allow folks to survive and be tracked.

        I get that the expense and weight appear prohibitive, but it’s insane to me that we put people 30,000 feet in the air with no plan other than prevention and measures that don’t completely address all dangers.

        I know nothing will likely ever be done in this vein, and probably rightfully so, but it sure feels like airlines are the ultimate “you pays your money and you takes your chance” experience. Given my own limited experience with flying, it increasingly scares the hell out of me personally. I didn’t have occasion to fly until I was in late middle age, and I found the experience thoroughly terrifying.

        • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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          21 days ago

          That’s a very normal reaction. You’re putting your life in the hands of technicians and engineers, to build, maintain and service the aircraft so it functions, qualified inspectors to certify that the plane is safe to fly, and pilots to fly the aircraft, and you, safely to your destination. Pretty much everyone you’re putting your life in the hands of, you’ve never met, never will, and it’s unlikely you’ll even know their names.

          It’s a lot of trust to put into people you don’t even know, to keep you alive in your chair in the sky.

          If that reality doesn’t at least give you pause, or some concern, then I’d be worried there’s something seriously wrong with you.

          Rest assured that statistics are on your side. It’s far more likely for you to get to your destination without any significant complications then it is for any complications to happen, including any that might lead to a crash or a fatality. Statistically, it’s comfortably one of the safest, if not the safest, method of travel.

          There’s nothing wrong with having some apprehension, fear, or worry, over placing your life in the hands of complete strangers; despite how qualified each and every one of them might be, they’re still strangers.

          All I can say is, if you’re bothered by it, learn how to parachute solo. It’ll take a while, but learn it. Then just pack your own parachute any time you fly. Problem solved. If you lose confidence in the pilots to keep you alive, bail.

          • slingstone@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            You gonna bail me out when I get arrested for trying to open the door mid-flight? 😂

            Seriously, though, all you guys here are right about everything you’ve said. I’ll undoubtedly be forced to fly again, and I’ll remind myself of these things when I do.

            Of course, if I’m on the one flight that does disintegrate in midair, well…my last thoughts of y’all might not be terribly charitable. 😉

    • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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      21 days ago

      I remember seeing an article back in the 90s or maybe even 80s that was exploring the possibility of the entire passenger compartment separating from the wings and rest of the fuselage and parachuting down in the event of a major failure. The thing is, it would be ridiculously expensive to implement, and there are very few situations where such a system would be any better than keeping the plane in one piece.

      • grandkaiser@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        Iirc, when experimented on, these ‘escape pods’ would enter a spin so violent it would turn the whole thing into a lethal centrifuge.

      • slingstone@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        Yeah, escape pods have been implemented in some aircraft in the past, but the idea has always ended without wide scale adoption for the reasons so many have stated here.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      21 days ago

      Rigging a commercial airline with that many ejection seats would add significant weight to the plane. You’d probably triple the cost of commercial airflight if you did this just from reduced seating capacity, and even assuming that it could be implemented without that overhead I still don’t think this would actually help much.

      Imagine you’re on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in a 737 Max nosediving towards the ground and the roof just opens up and launches you and all 148 of your fellow passengers out of the plane at 400MPH. Somehow I imagine that you just end up scattering the mangled corpses over a wider area.

    • mistermanko@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Some valid answers are already given by other commentators. Just want to highlight that commercial airlines are operating barely cost positive. Every extra bit of cost added has to be at least covered by some other stream of revenue. How much more money can a seat in these crammed airliners make to cover the cost of R&Ding and maintaining additional safety measures?

        • LordWarfire@feddit.uk
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          21 days ago

          That’s revenue, their profit was closer to $4.6bn which, whilst a big number, is a margin of under 8%.

          • LowtierComputer@lemmy.world
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            18 days ago

            Just like so many other businesses the money never makes it to the rich CEO, board members, affiliate’s pockets, and is definitely being paid to the pilots, flight attendants, and ground crew.

            That’s why they have so little profit and tax payments!

  • Troy@lemmy.ca
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    22 days ago

    Crash survival statistics are actually quite surprising. Like, you have higher survivability odds in the back of the plane – cause everyone in front of you is your crumple zone.

    • RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      Planes rarely reverse into mountains.

      And the survival statistics have a lot to do with the amount of work that has been put into making the worst case “controlled descent into terrain” scenario exceptionally rare.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        Planes rarely reverse into mountains.

        And when they do, everyone acts all shocked and bewildered and ask me how I did it

    • Lupus@feddit.org
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      22 days ago

      Like, you have higher survivability odds in the back of the plane

      But when you’re sitting in the front during a crash the snack cart comes by one more time.

    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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      22 days ago

      The stats of surviving in a plane are quite high.

      The stats of surviving in a plane with at least one death are very low.

      Usually, if anyone dies, everyone dies.

      • Frozengyro@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        No, people die on planes all the time. Almost 3 million people fly daily, I’m guessing people die in flight almost every day due to natural causes.

        However, I’m sure the stats with 2+ people dying, survival odds are quite low.

        • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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          22 days ago

          Honestly I wasn’t going to bother specifying this but yes obviously you’re correct. Alternatively it can be thought of as, “in a plane accident, if anyone dies, usually everyone dies”

      • Troy@lemmy.ca
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        22 days ago

        Almost certainly true of ocean landings. But I’ve spent a lot of time in bush planes (no crashes, knock on wood). I’ve had colleagues survive crashes where others have died. Perhaps it is sample bias, or something particularly about remote crashes.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Air_Flight_6560 – two of the survivors were in the back, both working for our company. After the crash: one never returned, one just quiet quit over the next year or two.

        https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yellowknife-plane-crash-kills-2-people-1.987369 – this plane crashed into our office building, killing the pilots, but the passengers all survived. I wasn’t there, but coworkers would often describe the experience inside the building.

        It happens often enough that I have two examples where I’m only one degree of separation.

        I had two colleagues survive a helicopter crash into a lake at full speed (calm day, no waves, pilot lost track of where the surface was) – one of my coworked was ejected out the front window of the helicopter (seatbelt was on). Didn’t even warrant a news story. But everyone survived this one, which may be a data point in your favour.

        I don’t have an actual source for stats. Got anything?

        • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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          22 days ago

          Jesus Christ what kind of work do you do

          As far as source, my ass. I heard it somewhere else (talking about commercial airliners) and it passed the smell test

          • Troy@lemmy.ca
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            22 days ago

            At the time, arctic mineral exploration. However I blew out my knee and started a business with lower personal risk (equipment targeting the same market) ;)

            Free photo – me doing science in the arctic in winter (February, so the sun is up) with curious caribou checking it out

              • Troy@lemmy.ca
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                22 days ago

                Kind of. My own business will probably needs to hire a tech sometime in the next six months. Ideally someone technically inclined with a steady hand (who can be trained to solder connectors onto cables, etc.)

                Oh, the arctic exploration stuff? My old employer is Aurora Geoscience – they have a careers page. There are others like them, depending on your citizenship and location. Many of these companies will hire labourers and semi-skilled technicians who want the lifestyle. You won’t get paid a lot – but it’s kind of like the military experience without the guns and you come out knowing how to do a lot of shit. A good life experience. :)

  • abbotsbury@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    God these comics are absolute trash, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an EFC that didn’t have an offensive art style and horribly mediocre punchline.

        • kokopelli@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          I think the general absurdity of it, plus you’re never quite sure where they’re gonna go.

          For example:

          • abbotsbury@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            It’s absurd in such a predictable way though, when every joke is le wacky literalism or I-want-to-die, it becomes rote.

            Like, okay, there’s the cum betweener, he cums between people. That sure is the opposite of what they said would happen in the first panel. Please clap.