Question

5 On July 25, 2000 the very first fatal accident involving a Concorde occurred when a Concorde bound from Paris to New York crashed during take-off and all 100 passengers and nine crew and four people on the ground were killed. After the accident, the Concorde was taken out of service for some time. Suppose, someone argues that: “It makes no sense to take the Concorde out of service. The safety record of the Concorde is rather good; it was the first accident in 31 years. Flying the Concorde is per kilometer travelled much safer than riding in a car. Car accidents are generally accepted, so there is no reason to suppose that the risks of the Concorde are unacceptable.” What do we call this fallacy? Argue, why this argumentation is not sound..

Answer 1

This Statement is not logical because of following reasons:

Concorde flight involves safety of large number of people while Car involves safety of few persons. For example in above accident total 113 people died in a single accident but in a Car accident generally people do not die instead they get injured or only few Casualties take place in a accident. Hence accident of Concorde is far more fatal than Car Accident.

The second important point is that number of Car accident are very large because Number of car vehicles are also large.For example you can find many car in a single street but number of Concorde in city will be very less. Hence if we count car accident per car than it would be very small fraction. Hence comparing Car accident with Concorde is not logical statement.