Tragedy should not precede safety, prevention

When I was watching the coverage of the Minnesota bridge collapse Aug. 1, alongside the… When I was watching the coverage of the Minnesota bridge collapse Aug. 1, alongside the reports of all the relief and rescue work I noticed something strange and a bit disturbing: Many news stations were reporting on the safety of our local bridges, as if the Minnesota tragedy was the first of a sudden spree of possible bridge failings across the nation. Of course, in the days immediately after such a tragedy, this is almost expected, since it calls into question the methods used to evaluate safety on bridges and roads across the nation.

However, it got me thinking about the way things seem to work with regard to ensuring public safety. It might seem weird, but when I was watching these reports about the safety of local bridges and trestles, the first thing that repeatedly sprung to mind was the airline bomb scare earlier this year when the bombers attempted to use liquid components. Of course everyone knows what happened in the aftermath of that event: Almost all liquids, even, in many cases, ones bought inside the airline terminals, were banned from airplanes. I personally had a tiny bottle of liquid soap, probably less than a fluid ounce, confiscated from me by Parisian airport security back in May.

But the thing that struck many people about the liquid ban was that it was, in many ways, a knee-jerk reaction. Instead of looking at how terrorists will behave in the future, we ban the methods they’ve already tried – and failed – to use. Which brings me to the bridge collapse. Suddenly, it seems everyone cares about bridge integrity and safety, whereas before the recent episode in Minnesota you would have been hard pressed to hear two words about it outside an engineering school.

This was the case in Minnesota, despite numerous studies that had shown several weak points in the bridge structure and recommendations that it should be repaired (although other reports on the same bridge felt that repairs “could be postponed,” according to CNN). In short, it took a national tragedy for people to pay attention, just like it took a series of terrorist attacks and attempts for airline security to realize how vulnerable it is.

The thing that really disturbs me about the whole situation, though, is that this seems to be not only the principal means of seeing problems in the world but also the only one that anyone will listen to. With regard to safety and security, to me it always seems like too few people are willing to evaluate and prepare for risks before they turn into tragedies.

I don’t know how many people have heard about this, but recently in central Pennsylvania, my home area, there has been a string of convenience-store robberies that police believe are all being done by the same person. There literally have been almost 10 of these robberies, but in the interviews I’ve seen with cashiers and owners, many of them have said the same thing: “We never expected it to happen here.”

Unfortunately, the same seems to be true of most major tragedies as well. Nobody expects anything to happen, and thus, nobody does anything to prevent its happening, even when the warning signs are bright and clear.

So perhaps people should instead start looking at what’s possible instead of what they think is probable or improbable, because obviously a lot of people don’t have very good abilities for judging probability. For example, if you’ve ever flown with a laptop, you know that the best way the security people have to check if it’s really a computer is to scan it with their X-ray and then make you turn it on.

However, did you know that it’s possible to fit a functional computer on a device the size of a USB thumb drive? Imagine if someone hooked up a device like that to a traditional laptop case. It would still look and even function like a computer but would literally have pounds of extra space inside the case for whatever could fit in it. And in all probability, the people at an airport security station wouldn’t catch it because it behaves just the way the security system says it should. But I’ve never once heard a thing to call into question our computer safety procedures, even though the technology has changed so much since those measures were started.

In short, I think that given the radical pace of growth and change in the world around us, we need to evaluate how our lives today affect the expectations of yesterday. For example, the bridge in Minnesota was more than 50 years old, and I would bet it was never intended to handle as much traffic as it was eventually forced to. But instead of looking at how the bridge was built, it took a collapse to call into question how we were using it. Perhaps we should look ahead before something similar, or something worse, happens again.

E-mail Richard at rab53@pitt.edu.