Assessing the Dangerous Trump / Musk Effect on Aviation and Highway Safety

“Elon Musk can declare, properly, every Starship explosion as a step forward because you have to try lots of things until you see what works. You can't do that with commercial airlines.” -

James Fallows

Here’s the webcast / podcast version of my Sustain What transportation conversation with longtime journalists

James Fallows

,

David Kerley

and Jim Motavalli. All the details and relevant links are in the “curtain raiser”:

Fallows weighed in on just how extraordinarily safe U.S. commercial aviation has become because of a constant iterative push - particularly after crashes or close calls - to assess and improve. And how Trump and Musk’s blunt-instrument approach to policy and agency capacities will inevitably lead to tragedy.

As he explained, “Elon Musk can declare properly every starship explosion as a step forward because you have to try lots of things until you see what works. You can't do that with commercial airlines.”

This wasn’t all a thrashing. Clearly the Federal Aviation Administration needs modernization, including examinations of the role of artificial intelligence and other technologies Elon Musk, in particular, has pushed. Kerley and Fallows both talked about the need to jump start the lagging NextGen project (Next Generation Air Transportation System).

Here’s the FAA NextGen site and a video explainer:

Here’s Kerley on this stalled program:

If you have more questions, post them in the comment thread and I’ll forward them to Fallows, Kerley and/or Motavalli.