Assume that all the new airport security measures increase the waiting time at airports by — and I’m making this up — 30 minutes per passenger. There were 760 million passenger boardings in the United States in 2007. This means that the extra waiting time at airports has cost us a collective 43,000 years of extra waiting time. Assume a 70-year life expectancy, and the increased waiting time has “killed” 620 people per year — 930 if you calculate the numbers based on 16 hours of awake time per day. So the question is: If we did away with increased airport security, would the result be more people dead from terrorism or fewer?
Relatedly, Tog claims that designing roads for speed first, and safety second, could save lives.