We all know that every time we board a plane flight, there is some chance that it will be our last moment on Earth, that any number of mechanical problems or human errors or acts of terrorism could send us spiraling at fifty thousand miles down into the ground or the ocean, where we instantly perish, our body too pulverized to be identified.
Hey, ain’t modernity great?
But we all continue to travel on planes, because it’s somewhat more convenient than cars or buses, and we know in the back of our heads that the odds our specific plane will crash are improbably minuscule, with the likelihood that we will actually die essentially non-existent.
But would you want to know precisely what the chances are you will? Fuck, no. Han Solo never cared.
So would you use a smartphone app called “Am I Going Down?” that tells you if you are going to die?
Fuck no, I say again. But that hasn’t stopped it from existing. Via the Daily Mail.
A new app, called ‘Am I Going Down?’, calculates a plane’s chances of crashing in an effort to put apprehensive passengers at ease.
Created by London-based Vanilla Pixel, the app uses real flight statistics to analyse flight safety.
I feel like that wouldn’t put me at ease. While the app will tell you that if “you’re flying on a Boeing 777 Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, there’s a one in 4,068,434 chance that your flight will go down en route,” that’s something I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to know an exact number. That makes it real. Because unless it’s one in 72 quintillion, I don’t care. I don’t want to know there’s a single fucking chance my plane will crash, regardless of whether it’s statistically impossible. Which, per the app, it is.
According to the app, if you take a flight every day for the next 11,146 years, you are unlikely to experience even one incident.
Tell that to all the people who have died in plane crashes. Nope, nope. In this case, ignorance is absolute bliss.
[H/T J Camm]