Quote:
|
British rail,in the old days were an integrated,solid,sound engineering based company. True they were not perfect. They hacked it to pieces,regulated it to death,people died,people will continue to die. Same thing.
|
Not really, although you're right about BR. In many ways it was the loss of the integrated oversight and responsibility that led to things like Hatfield and the myriad minor/near misses. It's important to realise that we've had a solid railway safety culture and things like the Railways Inspectorate laying down the law since about 1888, in the aftermath of the appalling Armagh accident. The pre-BR companies were always complaining about being forced to spend money meeting regulatory requirements, so it's nothing new, except that they a) rarely made any money and b) managed to improve safety.
Quote:
|
Why not regulate airports and aircraft in the same way? That really would be a very public danger though,planes crashing,hundreds of deaths.
|
? They're extremely heavily regulated in the West (maintenance, record-keeping, spare parts supply, duty time, pilot health, data recorders etc. plus people like the AAIB who are hard-core forensic engineers who make damn certain transgressions are known about) which is why they're extremely safe and have been getting safer (more flights, fewer crashes) and why running an airline costs so much*. Some parts of the world where it's not so heavily regulated have much more frequent crashes.
Proper regulation improves safety. That's why it's done, but it also helps that there's actually a working market in aviation. The worst thing you could do would be to lighten the regulatory load while still having a dysfunctional monopoly supplier.
* 'The best way to become a millionaire is to start off a billionaire and then set up an airline' - told of Richard Branson, but I think it got to him from someone else.