Salon 1

We recently had a tragic train wreck here in the DC area, yesterday, where 2 Metro trains collided. Unfortunately, over the 2 days prior to the accident, I had 2 separate conversations with people explaining how I predicted that there would be more plane crashes due to the economic crisis. Unfortunately, I was correct. I have not checked the stats, but it appears there were more crashes on the news recently, and the reasons are related to economic crisis (for the cases where we have a good estimate of the cause). The rationale is straightforward. Airlines are typically running in the red and sensitive to consumer spending trends. They have little room to cut expenses during economic low points. Hence, critical areas get cut – maintenance labor, part replacements, pilot rest periods, training, and selection criteria are lowered to those with failing test scores. It was reported today that the train that crashed was overdue for brake replacements and that the Metro could not afford to keep up with maintenance. Is the same phenomenon occuring here?