Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!swbatl!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: olsen@xn.ll.mit.edu (Jim Olsen) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Divestiture, Business and the General Public Message-ID: Date: 22 Aug 89 20:13:33 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: Jim Olsen Organization: MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA Lines: 25 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 318, message 9 of 12 John DeArmond writes: >..."deaths per passenger mile" is a completely bogus measurment which >does not represent the true safety condition of modern air travel. Mr. DeArmond is sadly mistaken. If one must use a single statistic to measure safety, deaths/passenger-mile is as good as any, and superior to deaths/vehicle-mile precisely because it does account for passenger load. Judged by the chance of death on a journey, airline safety *is* improving. However, other aspects of airline deregulation suggest interesting parallels to telecom deregulation. Although the overall safety of air travel is improving, many airlines are relaxing some safety standards: those standards which exceed the legal minimum requirements. There is actually nothing wrong with this, as long as the legal requirements are adequate and are properly enforced. If one believes that the relaxed standards are too lenient, the answer is not airline re-regulation, but simply to require higher minimum safety standards. As with the airline industry, the deregulated telecom industry is pushing the legal limits. Unfortunately, in many cases (such as AOS and COCOT's) these limits were almost nonexistent, leading to abuses. As with the airlines, the best solution is not to return to the "good old days" of non-competition, but to make and enforce strong regulations to curb the abuses. Since the laissez-faire FCC is reluctant to do this, it's up to Congress and the individual states to do the job.