Car Ferry Safety: Engines Off, Brakes Set, Passengers Out

Car ferries are a safe way to transport cars. But to follow best practices, you need to get out of your car while the ferry’s in open water.

I’ve written about car drownings before (in Florida, as is the case here, in New York, and in Oregon). If you die due to road trauma in the United States, statistically, this isn’t how it’s going to happen. But alongside dying in a crash-generated fire, deaths by water immersion are surely among the most feared ways of death involving motorized traffic. There’s a reason these stories make the news and have more staying power than “normal” crashes. If you’re going to die, you want it to be quick. Drowning and burning to death are not, compared to the agony they inspire.

Unfortunately, Emma Afra, 65, and Viviane Brahms, 75, suffered such a death on February 18th, 2020, around Fisher Island, Florida,  close to Miami Beach, when Emma accidentally drove their blue 2019 Mercedes-Benz car off the back of the Pelican car ferry they were traveling on and into the waters below. Let’s unpack what happened, how it could have been prevented, and what best practices look like involving car ferry safety.

How did Emma and Viviane die?

Per witness reports, Emma did not set the parking brake in her vehicle during the voyage and at some point (close to 5 PM local time), pressed the accelerator. She drove through the netting on the back of the ferry, entered the water, and the vehicle sank soon after. She and Viviane were found that evening hugging each other in the back seats of the car. The car was upside down on the bed of the ocean floor at a depth of 52 feet. The cause of death was almost certainly drowning.

Once in the water, is there any way they could have survived?

In every immersion case, we talk about how they entered the water and how the moment of leaving land (or in this case, a ferry) could have been prevented, but it’s also worth discussing if anything could have been done once the vehicle entered the water. The answer is different in every case, but the primary factors are almost always the situational knowledge of the individuals in the vehicle, the physical and mental conditions of the individuals and the rate, condition, and positions in which the vehicle in question impacted the water. Or to put it simply, your survival in an immersion situation depends on your understanding of how to leave the vehicle and how much time you have to do so, your fitness levels, and the way you hit the water. Let’s take a look at what happened with Emma and Viviane.

Given the relatively low freeboard, or deck height relative to the waterline, most of the velocity of the vehicle would have been horizontal (that spent driving off the deck) rather than vertical (that spent falling into the water). Similarly, images of the ferry shortly after the immersion suggest the vehicle would have had one length of driving room in front of it at most before leaving the deck, which also suggests a low entry speed. To put it bluntly, they would not have hit the water at a speed fast enough to severely injure or incapacitate them (remember that a 10th story fall is equivalent to a 55 mph crash), as long as they were wearing seat belts. The moment they entered the water, the clock started ticking. A car typically takes about 30 to 60 seconds to sink. They would have had to unbuckle themselves, wind down windows (remember that power windows will work for at least a few minutes in an immersion situation) or break them if they could not wind them down, and swim out. There are no other correct answers for survival unless they happened to have personal flotation devices within reach.

Calling for help would not have worked–not with their voices, not with their cell phones. Waiting for rescue would not have worked–not until they were outside the vehicle and treading water or swimming at the surface. Waiting for the vehicle to stop sinking (i.e., to touch the sea bed) in order to open the doors and swim out would not work because most people are psychologically and physically incapable of swimming 50 feet underwater on a single breath (especially in light of the fact that more than half of all Americans don’t have basic swim skills).

The moment they entered the water, they had to unbuckle, break or wind down the windows, and swim out. They had 30-60 seconds to do so. They could not. Most people, incidentally, would be unable to, because the vast majority of people would spend that survival window panicking, freezing, or calling for help. It’s a situation very, very few people are prepared for–even under ideal conditions (i.e., with low speed water entries, a lack of injuries, a lack of children or seniors, calm waters, warm waters, and daylight).

What are best practices for using car ferries safely?

The facts are sobering. Most people immersed in water deep enough to fully submerge their vehicles will drown, because they will lack the knowledge of what to do and the physical and mental abilities to do it. Only a small percentage will drown because their vehicles were so damaged escape was impossible or because they lost consciousness at impact. Statistically speaking, you’re going to freeze, panic, and drown.

With that in mind, the proverbs about ounces of prevention being better than pounds of cures are our best defenses, as they are in every high risk environment. I’ve gone on and on about how the way we drive and the places in which we drive matter far more than the vehicles we drive, and this is why: once you’re in the crash, things are out of your hands. Everything leading up to the crash is within them. You choose the roads you drive on, the speeds you use, the seat belts you attach, the car seat stages and orientations for your children, the lights you turn on, the tires you put on in the winter, and so on. All of these factors are designed to help you avoid crashes in the best scenarios and reduce injuries in the worst ones. When it comes to immersion situations, the immersion is the crash, and it’s almost always going to be a fatal one. The only winning move is to avoid it entirely.

How do you do that?

Here’s how you keep your car from driving or rolling over a car ferry deck with your loved ones inside

Well, if you’re on a car ferry, at a minimum, set your parking brake. This is the absolute least you can do, because just about every car can and will override the parking brake if the accelerator is pressed hard enough. And once you leave the deck, you’ve practically signed your death warrant, as well as those of every other occupant in your vehicle. So the parking brake isn’t good enough.

So shift your car into park along with setting the parking brake. This way there’s no possible way to drive into the ocean under your own power as long as you don’t shift out of park. The parking brake is still set to keep you from rolling off the deck if you shift into neutral. But this still isn’t good enough, because you might hit the shifter, or someone else (a child?) might bump it. And it would be no less tragic to die because you bumped out of park and didn’t know it than it would be to die because you hit the gas instead of the brakes. So the parking gear and brake aren’t good enough.

How about turning your engine off entirely? Now we’re starting to make some real moves–keeping in mind that you still are keeping your car in park while the parking brake is engaged, for reasons described above. A car in neutral, after all, doesn’t care whether the engine is on or off. But what if the ship starts to pitch and sway in rough weather? Cutting the motor, setting the parking brake, and keeping it in park isn’t good enough.

At this point, you might realize that nothing involving the vehicle itself is good enough. You can add wheel chocks, but those can move, particularly if the deck is getting sprayed with water while the ship is pitching back and forth. Chaining the car is even better, but it requires a ferry service with such resources and a policy of using them. So why don’t we skip all the way to the sure-fire, most effective solution?

Get out of the car until the ferry is docked

Best practices tend to be simple on a conceptual level. The hard part is following through. Nothing above is nearly as effective as the line you just read in bold. Get everyone out of the car and wait in the cabin with the crew, or in whichever waiting area they use for clients. The ferry doesn’t have one? Then that’s not a ferry worth taking. Respect yourself and your loved ones. Just get out of the car. Unless the entire ferry goes down (and if it does, you’ll likely have a chance to put on life preservers before it does), the ship itself is the safest possible place you could be. Not your car. Not your car. One more time for emphasis–not your car.

It might seem silly for a 10 to 15 minute ferry ride, especially if you have multiple children to unbuckle. Especially if you have infants. But the additional 5 minutes of hassle are much, much cheaper than the dozens or hundreds of years of life you and your vehicle’s occupants will lose if you find yourself rolling off the ferry because you didn’t want to get out of your car. Sometimes time is cheap, like when you’re leaving your car to wait in a cabin while on a car ferry. Sometimes it’s deathly expensive, like when your pilot gets lost in the fog and is about to crash into a hill and kill everyone onboard, or when you drive off a ferry and realize you only have 30 seconds to do your best NAVY SEAL impression for you and five other people in the second and third rows.

Put the odds on your side; don’t pitch yourself hopelessly against them. Best practices are best followed before they’re needed.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

Car Crashes Kill More Children than the Flu, or Keeping Influenza Dangers in Perspective

He may not like the flu shot. But it keeps him safe. And he’s at a much lower risk of death from the flu than he is from a crash.

Part of making informed decisions as a parent is making sure you’ve got the information in hand before you make the decision. Today we’ll talk briefly about two significant threats in children’s lives in the United States: road trauma, or car crashes, and the flu, or the influenza virus. One of these threats is more insidious, while the other is more temporal.

We hear about the dangers of car crashes fairly often, but for a variety of reasons, including our country’s tacit acceptance of the risks of driving as inevitable and immutable, we don’t pay much attention to them unless they involve us, people we know, or stores that receive high amounts of coverage on the nigthly or online news (e.g., the death of Princess Diana, which actually led to increases in suicides among women who self-identified with her). The flu, on the other hand, is generally ignored for about half of the year and thought of significantly during the other half, particularly when school-aged children attend public school systems or when news reports announce spikes in infection, hospitalization, or death rates.

However, as a reader of the CCD, you’re well aware that not everything that receives media attention is worth its coverage, and that a great many things ignored by the general population may be essential to our well being. Let’s take a quick look at the relative risks of children dying from road trauma (car crashes) vs the flu (influenza). The summary is that your child is around 4 times as likely to die from a motor vehicle during the flu season months (October to May) than she is to die from the flu, and that this rate balloons to 6 times that of the flu if the total number of child car deaths is compared to the annual total of flu deaths.

How many children die from the flu in the US in a typical year?

While the number of child influenza deaths reported to the CDC vary significantly from year to year (e.g., 110 in 2016-17, 188 in 2017-18, 144 in 2018-19, and 105 as of February 21st, 2019 in the 2019-20 season), the number lately has fallen between 110 and 188. Let’s use last year’s total of 144. Let’s also keep in mind that the flu season is generally acknowledged as spanning October through May, or 8 months (2/3rds) of the year.

How many children typically die from car crashes in the US in a typical year?

From a recent article, we know that 880 children under 13 died in 2018 from road trauma; this figure also floats up and down from year to year, but has generally ranged between a high of 1033 in 2016 and a low of 875 in 2014; every total since 2010 has fallen between these two boundaries.

Which is more dangerous, the flu or car crashes, for the average American child?

Comparing the numbers makes it clear that, while both of these dangers are meaningful, one poses far more of a risk, statistically speaking, than the other. When prorated by 2/3rds to represent the 8 month flu season, a child was approximately 4 times as likely to die from car crashes (880 * 2/3 = 587) as she was from the flu (144) in 2018. When the full tallies of both risks are compared, the same child was more than 6 times as likely to die from road trauma as she was from influenza.

This does not mean that the flu is not dangerous. It is. It kills tens of thousands of adults each year in the United States and a good 100 or more children die needlessly each year as well.

This does not mean that flu vaccines are unnecessary. They are. Vaccines overall are among the most important inventions we’ve ever come up with as human beings. I absolutely recommend the flu vaccine for children. Even if they end up with flu-like symptoms or infections, they’re significantly less likely to suffer severe symptoms or complications. This is basic information, but it bears repeating, especially since there’s a strong anti-intellectual streak running through the country with anti-vaccine propaganda leading to decreased immunization rates.

However, with all that in mind, the flu is not the bigger risk of the two for the vast majority of children in the United States (or around the world). Road trauma is. Six children die in the United States due to car crashes for every child who dies due to flu complications.

How do we protect our kids from the flu and from car crash fatalities?

To reduce your risks of flu illnesses, vaccinate your children. Beyond that, teach them to wash their hands (or do so for them if they’re young). Practice cough covering and sneeze covering. And above all, stay home and rest if sick. These tips apply equally to children and adults.

When it comes to car safety, it’s even simpler: if your child is under 5, rear-face her and don’t stop until she’s 5 and has outgrown her seat. Once she has, booster her until she’s at least 10 and has passed the five step test. And if she’s under 18, don’t let her drive without you.

You don’t have to check to make sure your child fits in one of these categories more than a few times a year unless she’s about to move from one category to the next. The hard part is making–and keeping–the three decisions to keep your child in safe configurations when everyone around you is forward-facing at 1 or 2, strapping their kids in seat belts at 7 or 6 or 5, and encouraging them to drive everywhere, all the time, and with as many passengers as possible from the day they’re legally allowed to at 16 (or 15, or 14 in certain states).

Follow best practices. Ignore foolish ones. That’s how you get everyone home at night.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

 

In Sweden, Motorcycle Helmets are Mandatory. In Most of the US, They’re Not.

In Sweden, everyone needs a helmet. In the United States, most states don’t care if you do or don’t (or live or die).

The other day I wrote about rates of helmet compliance for motorcyclists in the United States. We looked at what those rates were and how they were affected by helmet laws (or the lack thereof). We also compared helmet laws to seat belt laws and compliance rates for front and back seats in the United States, and then took a final look at helmet compliance in the United States vs in other rich (OECD) countries. The long and short of it is that we don’t require helmets in most states, we don’t make seat belt use a primary requirement (one for which you can be stopped and ticketed) in most states, and as a result, we have significantly lower rates of helmet and seat belt use compared to rates in our fellow rich countries. While I didn’t specifically address rates of seat belt compliance in fellow OECD countries, you can rest assured that, as is often the case, the US has much to learn from our wealthy neighbors.

Today we’re going to take a closer look at helmet compliance by referencing one of those wealthy neighbors–the one that’s brought the most knowledge to the world in domains related to child vehicular safety–Sweden. However, we’re not going to look at child safety today, but at how often motorcyclists in Sweden use helmets compared to how often they do in the United States, and what relevant laws are like. From the article’s introduction, the prior article on compliance and regulatory differences between the US and other rich countries, and the general history of this site, you likely have an idea of where these comparisons are headed.

What percentage of Swedish motorcyclists wear helmets?

Once again, we turn to the IRTAD 2019 Road Safety Annual Report. It turns out that the Swedes, as is almost always the case when it comes to road safety, are much better at following best practices than we are.

For motorcyclists, helmet wearing is the most effective passive safety habit. In Sweden, helmets have been compulsory for users of all of powered-two wheelers since 1975. The helmet-wearing rate of riders of powered two-wheelers is high, at 96-99%.

First of all, there’s the repetition of what we learned in the previous article: helmets are the best passive safety technique you can follow as a motorcyclist. However, the Swedes then took the logical step of requiring helmets, given how much of a difference they make between dead and injured motorcyclists. Helmets have been required for all motorcyclists, regardless of age or region, since 1975. Forty-five years later in the United States, we still haven’t gotten to where the Swedes were in the seventies. This isn’t unusual. We’re the same way when it comes to rear-facing.

Because helmets are required for everyone and have been for a generation, Swedes are used to using them. Between 96 and 99% of motorcyclists are estimated to use them. In other words, if 100 motorcyclists and scooter pilots ride past you, all but 3 of them will be wearing helmets. In the United States, around 29 of them with lack helmets, as we have a 71% compliance rate.

What percentage of Swedish drivers and passengers use seat belts?

The scene is no different when it comes to four-wheeled vehicles. Front occupants have been required to use seat belts without exception since 1975 and rear occupants have had to use them since 1988. Again, in the United States, while most states require occupants to use seat belts, only 18 require front and rear occupants to do so while giving police the authority to enforce belt use without viewing additional traffic violations. In other words, in many states in the US, you can’t be pulled over for not using a seat belt in the front seats without breaking an additional law, and the same exclusion applies to the vast majority of states for rear seat belt avoidance. This sounds foolish because it is foolish. But a lot of laws related to public safety are just like these in the US.

Because the Swedes don’t have foolish seat belt laws, they don’t have foolishly low rates of seat belt use. In fact, compliance rates in Sweden are estimated at 99% for front seat occupants and 94% for rear seat occupants. In the United States, the respective rates are at 89.6% and 76.1%. In other words, if 100 vehicles with 2 people in each of them (one in the front, one in the back) drive by you in Sweden, you’ll see, on average, only one front seat occupant and 6 rear occupants without seat belts. In the United States, you’ll see 10 in the front seats and 24 in the back lacking seat belts.

Why are Swedish rates of helmet and seat belt compliance so much higher than US rates?

Compliance rates are higher–much higher–in Sweden for motorcycle helmets and front and rear seat belts because they have much more stringent laws requiring helmets and seat belts. Our laws are lax and as a result, so is our population. You can’t make responsibility optional and decry a population that doesn’t respond. In the triad of best practices, these decisions fall under both driver behaviors (the decision to use or eschew helmets and seat belts) and infrastructure (the presence or absence of laws encouraging safe behaviors). Some people will use helmets and seat belts even if they aren’t required. Many won’t. And we all suffer for it, whether through the loss of loved ones or through needlessly stressed medical and emergency response systems (making it more difficult for other individuals to receive medical help as needed).

Our laws are lacking. Until they catch up, follow best practices–even if you have to learn them from other countries.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

Calabasas Crash Lessons: 60,000 Hours Knows When to Say No, Or How Expertise Brings Judgment

This is a Sikorsky S-76B helicopter, functionally equivalent to that in the Calabasas crash. As with any helicopter, however, it is only as effective as its pilots.

Lately on the Car Crash Detective, we’ve expanded the scope of the site somewhat to issues of aviation safety. In particular, I’ve been taking a closer look at the 2020 Calabasas crash that took the lives of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, John, Keri, and Alyssa Altobelli, Sarah and Payton Chester, Christina Mauser, and pilot Ara Zobayan. Zobayan on January 26th, 2020. My theory behind the analyses is that there’s something to learn from every discipline, and that connections can be drawn between best practices in auto safety and those in aviation safety, including in the risks we undertake when we are unable or unwilling to follow such practices. We first discussed the intersection of experience and expertise, followed by a review of the costs and benefits of safe systems in pilotage and helicopter safety.

As noted the other day, the three principles behind safe road use (individual behavior, vehicular safety, and societal infrastructure) have easily relatable manifestations in aviation safety. You need pilots with expertise in risk reduction, which comes from experience. You need sufficiently safe aircraft (in this case, helicopters) to permit the pilots to reduce risk and effectively aviate (fly), navigate (deduce where they’re going), and communicate (relay positions to air traffic control and ask for assistance as needed). You need well-designed infrastructure (air traffic control) to allow pilots to do all of the things mentioned above without flying into other aircraft.

Today, I want to continue that discussion and application of best practices in one field to another, retaining the underlying belief that at a core level, these principles may be applied to reduce risk in nearly any potentially dangerous environment. This is part of an ongoing series (see part 1 and part 2). With these tenets in mind, let’s take another look at the comment section of this article on the crash from the Daily Mail.

Aircraft chartering and leasing vs ownership – which is done, which is better?

While there are a range of comments in the article, there were a few that particularly stood out to me weeks ago just after the crash. A user called “Manda” responded to a user called “SlingingStickyGoo” who had stated…

$800 million? Wrong. Also, he didn’t own these. Leasing is a better option anyhow. Nobody owns airplanes or helicopters. They are all leased

There are four main positions in SSG’s post above: 1.) Kobe had a lower net worth than $800 million (which was the value quoted in the top comment that I responded to in the previous post in this series), 2.) Kobe didn’t own the helicopter, 3.) Leasing was a better approach to private aircraft use than purchasing, and 4.) No one pursued private ownership.

The first point is debatable. As previously discussed, Kobe’s net worth before his death may have been anywhere between $500 and $770 million; it’s quite possible it may have been more. At any rate, as noted earlier, even using a mid-range estimate $200 million lower than the $800 million estimate, the price of the helicopter would still have been insignificant.

The second point was accurate. Kobe appears to have leased or chartered the helicopter or its services, much as one would lease a car or charter (rent) an Uber, for a number of years. It isn’t clear which he did. What is clear is that he didn’t own it.

The third point is debatable. I’d argue (and did) that it makes far more sense to purchase a vehicle and personally maintain it if it’s important enough to use as a regular form of transportation than it is to rent it and rely on third hand parties for its upkeep. This goes for cars and aircraft alike. I’d make the same argument for the use of full time chauffeurs and pilots instead of chartered ones.

The fourth point is inaccurate. Private helicopter ownership is lower than leasing and chartering, but that doesn’t mean that they are never privately owned. And private airplane ownership is certainly alive and well among the top 1%, and by all accounts, significantly more popular than private helicopter ownership. Forget CEOs and celebrities; physicians buy planes because they’re within reach of their salaries, simpler to fly than helicopters, and offer significantly more speed and range.

With that said, there was a particular response to SSG’s post that I found fascinating and quite on point. And that’s where we’re going next.

He chooses to control what he can [regarding] safety

As noted above, a user named “Mandy” responded to SSG. Here’s what she had to say:

Sling, I disagree. My husband is one of two pilots who fly for a LA millionaire. His is probably half as rich but employees two pilots exclusively. He owns a 20 million dollar plane. Next week it goes into annual maintenance and updates. He chooses to control what he can in regards to safety. Two pilots, his own plane and over 60,000 hours experience between the pilots. Expensive? Yes. But safer than contract pilots and leasing to save a buck. Honestly what difference does the cost make when it is your life and you are writing it off as business expense. 60,000 hours knows when to say No, cant fly this morning.

This is why I wrote today’s article. This post contains an awful lot of wisdom without using an awful lot of words. Let’s unpack it.

First of all, Mindy noted her disagreement with SSG’s fourth point above, and immediately invalidated it through the experience of her husband. She goes on to note that her husband is one of two pilots employed by someone who might well have been a neighbor of Kobe, albeit with half the net worth. Using our prior estimate of $600 million for Kobe, this places the mystery LA millionaire at $300 million. Not too shabby.

What are our mystery millionaire’s expenses?

Next, we learn that he has a $20 million dollar airplane. But he doesn’t lease or charter it. He owns it (as I suggested Kobe could have with his helicopter).  As with Kobe, this amounts to a small amount of his net worth: specifically, a $20 million dollar plane is only 6.7% of his life savings. It’s a larger part of his net worth, yes, but it’s the equivalent of having $10,000 in savings and buying a $670 limousine. It’s something you can afford if you aren’t pinching pennies, especially if it’s a form of transportation you use on a daily basis.

His is probably half as rich but employees two pilots exclusively. He owns a 20 million dollar plane.

On top of the vehicle’s cost, he has two full time pilots employed. Mandy doesn’t note that they’re full time, but if they fly him exclusively, this suggests they’re paid sufficiently to work with him exclusively and are available on a daily basis. We’ve looked up pilot costs before, so let’s use those again and estimate $200,000 for a pair of pilots. We also looked up maintenance costs for helicopters, but interestingly, those don’t necessarily apply for business jets, which are more expensive to maintain. A better estimate appears to be on the order of a whopping $4.5 million a year.

Now we’re talking. We’re up to $20 million to buy the jet, $200,000 a year to pilot it with loyalty and redundancy, and $4.5 million a year to keep it in legal and working order. The rolling costs are $4.7 million a year. With our $300 million war chest, that’s roughly 1.6% of our net worth earmarked under “business jet expenses” each year.

That said, while it’s bigger than our Kobe estimates, it’s still not that bad. With a $10,000 net worth, it would mean spending $160 a year on a pair of full time drivers, annual maintenance, insurance, and a private garage.

That’s really not that much money in the scheme of things, particularly if you’re still employed and adding to said net worth. But we’re not done yet.

What you pay the most (or the least) for is experience. Expertise. Judgment.

Two pilots, his own plane and over 60,000 hours experience between the pilots.

This is the crux of the article. Mandy goes on to note that the two pilots hired by the millionaire (one of which is her husband) have a whopping 60,000 hours of combined flight experience.

That is huge.

This is exactly what I talked about earlier–about how expertise was the application of experience, and how the experience of pilots is most commonly measured through flight hours. Remember how Captain Sully, whose expertise led to 155 lives saved, had 20,000 hours of flight time?

This man’s pilots each have 50% more time in the cockpit than he does, presuming they have relatively equal amounts of experience. And in either case, when their hours combine (hello Captain Planet!), they have three times as much experience as a pilot renowned for his exceptional judgment.

Ara Zobayan–Kobe’s pilot–had 8,200 hours. A fellow pilot noted that he was rated to fly through instruments but didn’t have any actual experience flying in clouds. These two pilots have more than seven times as much combined experience as he did. They have almost as much experience when combined as the most experienced pilot in history, Ed Long, who racked up more than 65,000 hours (the equivalent of flying nonstop for more than 7 years and 4 months of one’s life) between the ages of 17 and 83.

Mandy knows the value of experience, and she knows her husband’s boss does too.

Two pilots, his own plane and over 60,000 hours experience between the pilots. Expensive? Yes. But safer than contract pilots and leasing to save a buck. Honestly what difference does the cost make when it is your life and you are writing it off as business expense.

Here she drives it home. The millionaire knows he could be spending less money if he cut corners. He doesn’t have to own the plane. He doesn’t have to maintain it as thoroughly as he does. He doesn’t have to have two pilots with three times as much combined experience as a retired airline captain. But he does spend the money because he values his life. And he values the expertise of the people he hired to keep him alive.

60,000 hours knows when to say No, cant fly this morning.

It is difficult to have judgment without expertise. It is difficult to have expertise without experience. Sixty thousand hours of judgment, of expertise, of experience won’t leave the ground on a suicide mission. That many hours won’t keep going instead of turning around if that’s what’s best. That much time in the air is what you want when the only thing that matters, ultimately, is if you land alive.

Look at the passenger manifest. Hundreds of years of life were lost across those nine souls. Even if we just looked at the three children on board, it’s hard to fathom. The average US female life expectancy at birth is around 81 years. A 13 year old would have been cheated out of 68 years of her life. Two of the girls (Gianna and Payton) were 13 while Alyssa was 14. That’s 203 years gone, simply because the pilot flew beyond his competency and lacked the safety systems in his helicopter that could have helped him when he needed them most.

What do we take away from this?

I think Mandy’s summary of her husband’s boss’ mindset is as good as anything else to take away from this tragedy. Choose to control what you can regarding safety. Do so intentionally. To me, that means following best practices to the best of my ability, whether in how I drive, what I drive, or where I drive.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

Calabasas Crash Lessons: The Benefits of Multiple Safety Systems

This is a Sikorsky S-76C, essentially the same kind of helicopter that crashed in the Calabasas tragedy. What could have kept it in the air?

The other day, we discussed the Calabasas helicopter crash that killed Kobe and Gianna Bryant, John, Keri, and Alyssa Altobelli, Sarah and Payton Chester, Christina Mauser, and pilot Ara Zobayan. Zobayan on January 26th, 2020. Zobaya flew a 1991 Sikorsky S-76B helicopter. Specifically, we looked at the intersection of expertise and experience, and drew analogies between the three principles behind safe road use (individual behavior, vehicular safety, and societal infrastructure) and their manifestations in aviation safety.

Today, I want to continue that discussion and application of best practices in one field to another, retaining the underlying belief that at a core level, these principles may be applied to reduce risk in nearly any potentially dangerous environment. This is part of an ongoing series. With these tenets in mind, let’s take a look at the comment section of this article on the crash from the Daily Mail. There’s often a lot of questionable content there, but at times, I’ve come across thoughts as insightful as anywhere else on the Internet.

To what degree could money have bought safety in the Calabasas crash?

The top comment on the article is as follows:

If I’m worth 800 million I’m buying all the safety options for my chopper and paying for a 2nd pilot.

It’s hard to argue with “TheTruth9922”, particularly in light of how the flight turned out. But more broadly, there is much to learn from his comment. First of all, the wealth estimate he posited for Kobe Bryant appears to be roughly accurate; figures floated at the time of his death ranged from 500-770 million. Let’s use Forbe’s estimate of $600 million.

For reference, a Sikorsky S-76 cost approximately $13 million in 2014. Since we’re in 2020, let’s add a million to that and presume one would cost $14 million today. Let’s also add $35,000 to that for a Terrain Awareness and Warning System, or TAWS, per FAA estimates. That figure is small enough to be a rounding error; if a helicopter cost $1,400, it would be the equivalent of an extra $3.50, or an amount small enough to be unnoticeable. So we’re not even going to include it in future calculations. Just know that it’s there.

What about flight recorders, or “black boxes”?

The helicopter also lacked a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, both of which are known in common parlance as black boxes. Neither will save you in a crash, but both will help people figure out what was going on in the last minutes of your flight if you don’t make it home. A flight recorder can cost up to $15,000, and you want two of them. Incidentally, N72EX, the 1991 Sikorsky S-76B on the ill-fated flight, was originally fitted with both flight recorders when used as a governmental helicopter in Illinois. However, when Island Express bought it from Illinois in March 2016, they removed both. But let’s say we installed them. Add $30,000 to the $14 million. It’s still irrelevant.

How do you keep it from smashing into the ground?

So we’ve got a brand new S-76 with TAWS and flight recorders. TAWS, by the way, is a terrain awareness system. They’re required on all commercial flights in the US and present in 95% of airlines around the globe. Much like flight recorders, TAWS aren’t required on helicopters in the United States. This is still the case despite the fact that the National Transportation Safety Board recommended in 2004 after an S-76A crash involving a controlled flight into terrain (i.e., a situation where the pilots erroneously flew the helicopter into the sea) that they be outfitted in all helicopters meant to seat at least 6 passengers. The FAA ignored the recommendation, although they eventually mandated TAWS systems on air ambulances in 2014, ten years later. The point of such systems is to alert pilots of an imminent risk of flying directly into the ground or sea. We want that.

You can buy helicopter safety, but you can also buy pilot safety through redundancy

At this point, we’ve got a good helicopter with modern safety features. All that’s left is the pilot. But we’re safety oriented, so we don’t just charter one; we hire one–full time. We want someone who isn’t thinking of working somewhere else while working with us, and who knows our specific helicopter like the back of his or her hand. And we don’t just want one, because we want to reduce risks related to health issues in pilots. We also want pilots to be able to get second opinions and have help in complex situations, such as when relying on instruments to aviate, navigate, and communicate in dense flog. So we’ve got two pilots. If they’re full time pilots, we want to pay them enough to ensure they stay well trained and well rested and aren’t moonlighting as Uber pilots or drivers on the weekends or after their shifts end. Per the BLS, in May 2018, a commercial pilot had a median annual wage of around $82,000. Budgeting for two of them, then, brings the salary expenditures to $164,000 a year. Let’s round that up to $200,000. We want happy pilots.

What about maintenance and insurance? Wouldn’t that add up too?

Great point. While values will vary, let’s use the figures from a discussion on a helicopter forum. Including insurance, inspections, fuel, oil (they need oil changes just like cars do), hangar rental, and other random bits of maintenance, $20,000 a year looked like a safe estimate in 2010 for a private helicopter. However, it’s 2020, so let’s make that $22,000 a year. In fact, we’re not going to cheap out on insurance, especially since we may be transporting other people, so let’s just bump the figure up to $30,000 a year to make sure we’re not skipping steps on maintenance or on insurance coverage.

But wait. A different site–one specifically targeting aircraft maintenance costs–with additional information on the S-76B charts maintenance as much more–to the tune of more than $900,000 a year. So to be on the safe side, let’s use a round figure of $1 million for maintenance, fuel, and insurance. It’s a lot, but it’s apparently the price of safety.

How much would it have cost in total to have a safe pilot and safe helicopter setup?

In total, we’re looking at an out the door cost of $14 million for the helicopter and rolling costs of $1.2 million a year for pilot pay and maintenance.

Now let’s look again at Kobe’s net worth.

At $600 million, the helicopter would have immediately sliced off 2.3% of his net worth; the equivalent of buying a $230 limousine (with modern safety features, remember) through $10,000 in savings. In other words, it would have been irrelevant. To extend the analogy, the rolling costs of $1.2 million at his pay grade would have been the equivalent of our $10,000 high roller dropping an additional $20 each year on a pair of full time drivers, annual maintenance, and a private garage.

This has become too ridiculous to type. Which makes it all the sadder.

The dangers of being penny-wise and pound foolish

None of these prices had any meaning whatsoever at his income level. He could have had two trained, full-time pilots, a brand new helicopter (which itself would have been unnecessary, as a maintained helicopter can be used for decades, just as a maintained airplane) with modern safety features, and all maintenance-related expenses cared for without thinking twice.

Two full time pilots might have had the judgment to stay on the ground that day. Had they flown, the additional set of eyes, ears, and brains might have led to safer decisions–including that to turn around or switch to instrument-based flight. Two full time pilots who intimately knew their helicopter and had any and all safety features they could ever have asked for might have been able to avoid crashing into the ground with what appears to have been a complete loss of control and orientation of the helicopter that day.

Sometimes, safety is worth paying for. When driving, that doesn’t mean buying the latest vehicles. It does mean following best practices as a driver (which might mean spending money on high-weight car seats or winter tires if you see snow each year). It does mean using vehicles with, at a minimum, ESC and side impact airbags (and not simply buying the cheapest vehicles possible for your adolescent or college-aged drivers). It does mean choosing safe infrastructure whenever possible (even if that means spending a bit more on gas to find safer roads).

Part 3 in this series is here.

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