Overview:
THE PROBLEM:
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"One of the main reasons [for the injuries
and the deaths] 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.
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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."
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The quote above is from: Edmund Cantilli, in an article which appeared
in Newsday Magazine in December 1982. At the time Cantilli wrote this article he was Professor of
Transportation Planning and Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute
of New York. At the time he was and remains today Executive Director of the nonprofit Institute
for Safety in Transportation,.
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