After three years of research, inventor Vladimir Tatarenko believes he finally has a way for passengers to survive any airplane crash.
The solution: Simply attach parachutes to the cabin so it can float safely down to Earth.
Tatarenko has a patent on a cabin design that resembles a capsule, which slides into the shell of the airplane. In the event of a catastrophe, the capsule can break away from the plane's nose (hopefully after the pilots have made their escape), sliding out the back and making a soft landing, even over water.
"Surviving a plane crash is possible," Tatarenko told LiveLeak last November. "While aircraft engineers all over the world are trying to make planes safer, they can do nothing about the human factor."
Here's how it works:
Tatarenko's invention seems useful (if more than a little fantastical), but the chances of incorporating something this on such a large scale are slim.
The biggest reason? Airplane crashes almost never happen.The average American's chances of dying in a crash are one in 11 million. (Car accident fatalities are one in 5,000.)
Tatarenko's vision also requires an entire overhaul of how airplanes are currently manufactured. A Boeing 737, for instance, has 373,000 parts.
Swapping out thousands of parts to shrink an already microscopic risk would create an enormous cost, which most airlines probably have little interest in absorbing.
So while Tatarenko's intentions are good, his instincts are misguided. Airplanes (and anxious passengers) are classic victims of a negativity bias. We see a news story that a plane crash and the image of fire and debris burn into our brains, even if we personally have nothing to worry about.
