Letters to the Editor
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Another bump in the road
Thanks for the great explanations. As a person who is an unwilling, albeit frequent, flyer I used to be terrified of turbulance. Then a pilot used this analogy to describe turbulence; it's like driving a car on a bumpy road. The bumps aren't going to make the car crash, they just spill your drinks. So whenever I encounter turbulence on a flight I think of all the bumpy roads I've driven on and how my car was always perfectly in control. I imagine the surface of the road, remembering the rutted mountainous roads with bathtub-sized potholes I've traveled on and I'm distracted from my fears. I also remind myself that my chances of crashing are a million times smaller than if I was driving in a car. Nowadays I'm much more afraid that airport security isn't going to like the way I look, or the sound of my voice, or color of my hair, and lock me up in some secret foreign prison. Seriously, I think we are more likely, statistically, to end up wasting away in some dank prison, being tortured and tried without knowing our crime than to crash in a airplane.