Here’s a thought, if you work for a police agency that specializes in air travel, don’t test your screeners by using real explosives planted on unwitting tourists. The Slovakian air police did just this and one of the eight explosives was not detected and the poor Irish tourist was arrested near the end of his journey. It wasn’t until three days later that the Slovak police got in touch with their Irish counterparts and told them to let the man out of jail.
Researchers have revealed that your chances of getting on a plane that has a potential terrorist are far far lower than your chances of getting struck by lightning. “Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000,” says FiveThirtyEight.
Meanwhile, the TSA is taking even greater steps to destroy anyone’s desire to ever get on an airplane or ever travel to the U.S. again. They want to prevent any electronic devices from being in the cabin during international flights into the U.S. Everyone will be patted down before boarding, and, you also cannot get up during the last hour of the flight or even use a blanket during this last hour. You tell me, is there really any level of risk we should give up these rights for?
Image via mugly.