The National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that investigates major U. S. airplane crashes, says that 88 per cent of all crashes are "survivable." This means that all of the occupants should have been able to escape with their lives, and yet, almost 20 per cent of the people involved in such crashes are killed or seriously injured.

Why so many injuries?
One of the main reasons is that aircraft manufacturers have concentrated on "airworthiness" and ignored "crash-worthiness." Airplanes are primarily designed and built to withstand air pressure and turbulence, but tests are rarely conducted to find out what happens to a plane and the people in it when it hits the ground, a body of water, or an immovable structure, such as the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, D. C.

The hundreds of people who have been killed this year in "survivable" airplane accidents have died not because death was unavoidable; they have died because the airplane they were traveling in was too flimsy, because their seats and seat belts did not hold, because fire was almost inevitable and because, in a fire, many materials used inside the airplane produced toxic fumes.