Air crash damages: the price of life
November 10th, 2006The more American victims in an air crash, the heavier the financial burden for whomever is found responsible in the tiniest manner. Having worked in the aircraft manufacturing industry, with passenger safety constantly in mind, I have long had issues with this fact. I could not help wondering what were the moral/logical grounds to value loss of life in terms of financial compensation.
The ratio in damages recovered in similar cases between western plaintiffs and citizens of the rest of the world raises serious moral questions.
“Sure the rewards in the U.S. are more substantial than anywhere else in the world” (Frank Geneda, quoted in Wikipedia about PanAm flight 103 compensation, amounting to $10 million per family)
Even if I know that the logical explanation for this apparent injustice is that American law firms are by far the most relentless, pugnacious, efficient and thus expensive in the whole universe, it is the implicit cynicism towards under-lawyered Colombian or Malian victims that I resent the most. Surely, third-world people are accustomed to seing relatives die from disease, famine or war, so it is no big deal for them when they do from a mere technological flaw or a dumb pilot error in the safest tranportation means in the world.
The article is an attempt at untangling some of the legal/moral aspects of victims compensation in the context of air safety, but not only. I am conscious I am very far out of my territory here — I am no lawyer and no moralist — maybe with a little leniency you can find some interest in my discussion; if you feel my scientific mind has strayed too far out of its enclosure, please let me know: I will do more research before I wade towards this topic again.
What is just
It seems just that if someone or some organisation is found responsible of deliberate safety breaches, intentional negligence, repeated mistakes, they should bear the consequence in some way.
It seems just that the family of a victim, having their whole lives shattered in a spectacularly violent manner, should be ensured and get compensation in some way.
But who ever said that both should be linked ?
Why exactly should someone pay ?
The financial penalty should act as a deterrent: the rule should be arranged so that safety is always the cheapest option for an organisation. Hopefully, industrial or otherwise organisations are rational actors: if they know for sure that any money saved from bad safety will be lost tenfold when said bad safety results in disaster, then they will necessarily choose safety.
What should the financial penalty be dedicated to? The punishment could be seen from a more moral viewpoint as a duty to repair: you break stuff, you mend it. However, when people die in the breaking, no amount of mending will ever be enough to bring them back. The mending has to apply to something else. For instance correcting the design to make sure the same accident does not happen again. Therefore, maybe we should see this as a sort of redemption: doing some good deed to offset the sin.
If it is obvious that this good deed can not apply to the accident itself (what is done is done), should we choose to correct something closely related to this one accident (change this particular design) or are other ways of redemption acceptable? Would it be OK to modify another design, unrelated to this accident, but which we believe is a greater hazard? Would it be OK to say that in comparison to other solutions for saving lives, investing in air safety is the least efficient: the current safety level is so high that saving more lives has become almost impossible.
Let’s be the devil’s advocate for a minute and choose an interesting (fictitious) example where an undersized locking mechanism in the landing gear, combined with stormy weather and windshear, an overweight aircraft, a badly trained pilot, and an irregular airport parking habit has led to the folding of the landing gear upon (hard) touchdown, the skidding of the airframe off the runway, the colliding of the wing with parked trucks, and the dying of all 120 onboard in the subsequent furnace? Should the manufacturer change the design of the lock mechanism and retrofit all 4,300 flying aircraft in the fleet? It would cost probably over 400 million dollars. As this accident was an exceptional case combining exceptional causes, the probability that the design change will ever actually save other people from a similar disaster is close to zero. Can we really not think of better purposes to dedicate such effort to? Could we spend the 400 million on improving airport navigation (a major safety hazard), or terrain avoidance (the first cause of air disasters)? Can we go further and say that so much effort has already been spent on aircraft safety, that apart from obvious design flaws, an extra dollar on safety will have little effect, whereas sending the 400 millions to a Bengali hospital will obviously save many more lives and be a much more effective redemption?
Is it not a morally acceptable redemption not to worry whether some people might still die in (remotely similar) air disasters if the financial compensations help to save many more from famine or disease? (I am guilty here of using a lousy argument, often wielded by those who believe fundamental scientific research is a waste of time and money — forgive me, I just wanted to make a point and cast some doubt)
Whatever the redemption method that you believe is justified, you would probably agree that handing the 400 million dollars over to the families of victims is not the best solution: it mends nothing, it improves nothing, it saves nobody.
Why exactly should victims be paid ?
Losing a close relative is possibly one of the worst experiences in life, the closest image I can think of for a visit to Hell. If financial hardships come along, then the visit to Hell might become a one-way trip for a whole family. Protecting a victim’s relatives from bankruptcy or eviction is a fundamental duty. Lawyers are certainly right when they demand at least such a protection.
But this is true whatever the cause of death, from an air crash or a heart attack, from a gunshot or an aneurism, from poisoned water or a tornado. Is losing a husband or a child any easier when it is just hard luck? In short: I believe all families should be protected the same, whether a responsibility/guilt can be established, or not. This proves once again that the penalty and the compensation are not to be related in any way. But it gives us another idea: probably all penalties should be paid to a mutual fund, so that all victims could get the same compensation, whatever the cause of their misfortunes. This would give everybody the same chances, and avoid that 737-crash widows become millionnaires, while cholesterol-orphans are thrown out to the street.
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