Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vog obam here. When the fastened seatbelt sign flashes
Speaker 1: on in airplanes, with its accompanying provenly gentle ding, it's
Speaker 1: often met with equal parts annoyance and resignation, like, what again,
Speaker 1: really do I have to The answer, of course, is yes,
Speaker 1: you really have to. It's for the good of your
Speaker 1: skull and that's where you keep your brain. We spoke
Speaker 1: with Richard mcspaden, the executive director of the Aircraft Owners
Speaker 1: and Pilots Association's Air Safety Institute. He said, I think
Speaker 1: it's the old it's not going to happen to me syndrome.
Speaker 1: Aviation accidents are so rare that people say, what are
Speaker 1: the odds that's going to happen to me? And I
Speaker 1: would agree with them that the odds are extremely low,
Speaker 1: But he continued, I would then add that even though
Speaker 1: the odds are low, the consequences of something happening can
Speaker 1: be pretty significant. Even if it's just a bump in turbulence.
Speaker 1: If you're not strapped in right, your head could hit
Speaker 1: the top of that airplane. That can result in a
Speaker 1: serious injury. And it's so effortless to drop a seatbelt
Speaker 1: around you, and he's right. Though folks of above average
Speaker 1: size may argue with the effortlessness of those seat belts,
Speaker 1: but airplane companies are working on that, and in flight
Speaker 1: turbulence is more than a mere nuisance. The Federal Aviation Administration,
Speaker 1: or f a A, reports that fifty eight people are
Speaker 1: injured by turbulence on airplanes every year while not wearing
Speaker 1: their seatbelts. Most are not ticket holding passengers. Of the
Speaker 1: two hundred and ninety eight serious injuries from turbulence that
Speaker 1: the f a A recorded from eight hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: four involved flight attendants. A simple lap belt or even
Speaker 1: other restraints like shoulder harnesses, may not be enough to
Speaker 1: save a life if an airliner undergoes a catastrophic midair failure,
Speaker 1: but the rare accidents like that are not the main
Speaker 1: reasons for seat belts on airplanes. They're designed to protect
Speaker 1: you from the airplane during flight. Oatherpool and American Airlines
Speaker 1: flight attendant and author put it this way to the Telegraph.
Speaker 1: In the reason you must wear a seat belt, flight
Speaker 1: crew include it is because you don't want the plane
Speaker 1: coming down on you. People think they're lifted up in
Speaker 1: the air during turbulence. But the truth is the plane drops,
Speaker 1: it comes down hard, and it comes down fast, and
Speaker 1: that's how passengers get injured by getting hit on the
Speaker 1: head by an airplane. It's simple physics, Newton's first law
Speaker 1: of motion. A body at rest will remain at rest
Speaker 1: unless an outside force acts on it. But let's unpack that.
Speaker 1: If you're not wearing a seat belt on an airplane
Speaker 1: that drops suddenly, which often happens with turbulence, you're the
Speaker 1: one at rest. You'll stay at rest as the plane
Speaker 1: very literally drops out from under you. If you're strapped in,
Speaker 1: the seatbelt serves as an outside force acting on you,
Speaker 1: taking you with the plane as it drops, and saving
Speaker 1: you from bonking your head on that overhead been above you.
Speaker 1: Mc batten said. It allows you to stay in place
Speaker 1: and ride along with the airplane. It's just that added
Speaker 1: safety margin that if something unexpected happens, you're still going
Speaker 1: to stay with the airplane. But if that's the case,
Speaker 1: would shoulder harnesses be better? A little reasoning might suggest
Speaker 1: that if a lap belt is good while flying, a
Speaker 1: shoulder harness like those in cars and those in smaller
Speaker 1: so called general aviation planes would be even better. Indeed,
Speaker 1: shoulder belts or harnesses might help, according to some experts.
Speaker 1: Mcpadden said the answer would be yes. It certainly would
Speaker 1: help because it would prevent the movement of the upper
Speaker 1: torso aggressively in terms of some kind of sudden impact.
Speaker 1: How you can do that is another question. Entirely, such
Speaker 1: harnesses would be costly to install and trickier to get
Speaker 1: to work correctly on bigger commercial planes that probably be
Speaker 1: uncomfortable on longer flights, And because of all of that,
Speaker 1: wearing shoulder harnesses might meet a lot of resistance from
Speaker 1: the flying public. In large commercial airlines, lap belts do
Speaker 1: the trick against the vertical forces typically experienced in a
Speaker 1: malfunction or crash. In smaller aircraft, though, shoulder harnesses work
Speaker 1: and work well, which is why they are required for
Speaker 1: all seats in all small airplanes manufactured since December twelve.
Speaker 1: Used with lap belts, shoulder harnesses in smaller planes have
Speaker 1: been shown to reduce serious injuries from accidents by percent
Speaker 1: in fatalities by twenty according to the f a A. Ironically,
Speaker 1: the safety record of commercial airlines may be the overwhelming
Speaker 1: reason that shoulder harnesses have not been required of large
Speaker 1: passenger planes. In seventeen, no one was killed in a
Speaker 1: commercial jet airliner incident anywhere in the world, making it
Speaker 1: the safest year ever for big passenger planes. In its
Speaker 1: civil Aviation Safety Review for twenty seventeen, which examined accidents
Speaker 1: on large passenger aircraft, the Dutch aviation consulting firm t
Speaker 1: O seventy estimated that there were zero point zero eight
Speaker 1: fatal accidents per million flights. That is a rate of
Speaker 1: one fatal accident for every twelve million flights. With a
Speaker 1: safety record like that, it's hard to argue that shoulder
Speaker 1: harnesses would lower the risk of flying enough to offset
Speaker 1: the costs, the effort, and the resistance that such a
Speaker 1: major change would generate. Lat Belts, though they help, they
Speaker 1: help a lot, so when flying it's probably best to
Speaker 1: buckle up and stay that way. It's for your brain's
Speaker 1: own good. Today's episode was written by John Donovan and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang, with kind engineering assistance from Ramsay youngt.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other skull saving topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.