A proper language comparison...

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On Friday, 26 July 2013 at 19:38:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I am continually amazed at critical systems design in Fukushima 
> and Deep Water Horizon that have no backups or overrides.

I hope I'm not being unfair, but my impression was that the very 
impressive modern safety record of air travel is at least partly 
down to lessons learned from some major historical catastrophes. 
The one that always springs to mind is the De Havilland jets 
breaking apart mid-flight due to metal fatigue.

The number of flights and resulting near misses surely helps to 
battle test safely procedures and designs. That volume of 
learning opportunities can't readily be matched in many other 
industries.

That's not to defend the examples you cite -- the holes in safety 
provision in both of them were pretty shocking.