I should have said: "and employees I see outside the TSA HQ complex...."

I actually have a friend like that. He was actually to the point of considering dividing his family up on two flights so his whole family didn't die in a plane crash or terrorist incident on the family vacation. Got 3 (not 4 kids), so he'd take a kid or two with him and his wife would take the other(s). I thought he was absolutely nuts.

I brought out the usual arguments about more likely to die on the way to the airport, more likely to be struck by lightning, blah blah. He finally conceded that he could keep his family together but thought that TSA was absolutely doing a great job. Baby steps I guess.

Pretty much his fear came down to not being in control - that he was at someone else's mercy. When he's driving, he has control of the car and can dodge, etc. I pointed out that he has less control than he thinks - he can't control the other idiots around him and there's no guarantee that he'd have the room, skill, or even the chance to react. And I also asked him how he felt riding in car as a passenger then since he has no control. Same thing - just he's on the ground instead of in the air.

And yes, he's the once a year type flyer too.

We pretty much don't talk about this topic anymore.

^

Fixing?

TSA should be wiped off the map and replaced with Argenbright.

While not advocating paranoia about air travel or absurd/extreme measures, I have always wondered about the validity of the stats that claim flying is so much safer than driving and the claims that drivers actually don't have much/enough control to make a difference.

For example, a large plurality of car-accident injuries and fatalities happen between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. and/or involve alcohol/drug consumption on the part of the driver of that car (not the driver of the other car, which I cannot control). I can control both of those factors by avoiding the roads between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. and not driving drunk or riding with a drunk driver. I wonder how much of the safety margin between flying and driving is eliminated by those simple choices. Add more margin by not driving sleepy, minimizing or avoiding cell phone use, etc.

In contrast, I have little to no control over the rested state or impaired state of commercial airline pilots, other than FAA regulations and the margin provided by requiring a copilot. I would not have driven a car under the conditions that the pilots of Continental/Colgan Air 3407 were operating, but it's unlikely any of the passengers knew how sleep-deprived and distracted their crew was.

DMV's are routinely mocked as striking epitomes of government inefficiency, and yet most people put up with them on a very infrequent basis to renew a license, get a permit for a teenager, etc. Everyone hates doing it, everyone acknowledges it sucks, but since the general public is only forced to patronize one every few years, it's easy to dismiss. It's easy to think "Oh, I was just here on a busy day/time, I'm sure the line isn't normally this long."

Of course, if you visited the DMV weekly for years at a time, it would be enough to make your blood boil. But if there is a drivertalk.com, I doubt the DMV would be subject to even one-tenth the vitriol that we direct towards the TSA because the vast majority of the public just doesn't interact with it enough.

One experience, no matter how egregiously terrible, is rarely enough to inspire any behavior change. Think of a restaurant or grocery store or pretty much any retail outlet where you had a negative experience. Short of being physically assualted or robbed, one long line or a lousy clerk is not likely to dissuade you from returning.

Those who fly frequently clearly have a valuable perspective and insight into truly how terrible the TSA, its procedures, management, and employees truly are. However, I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done to share this experience in a meaningful way that will produce any substantial result.

9/11 is like the corollary to Godwin's Law.

Mike

TSA* needs to be FIXED, as in "we're taking Fido to the vet to get FIXED." @:-)

*Before anyone complains about verbal attacks, I mean the organization as an entity, not the individual screeners.

TSA could also be called CYA (cover your you know what) as I think that was the driving force for it's creation by the government. We are spending billions to screen 99.999 of those flying who have no intention on doing anything but flying from point to point. It needs a major overhaul.

I don't travel very often at all, but even on my few travels I have found the European security theater more respectful than the TSA. I might be lucky, but I have never had a TSO yell or be rude to me. The big difference to me personally is the way searches of my baggage is handled.

I carry a lot of camera equipment and my bags to get cluttered due to the need to fit a lot of stuff into my camera bag. So I know that I often get picked to have my bags searched at the checkpoint. This search is where I see the most difference between the US and Europe.

US: Watch as the TSO takes off with your bags as you try to put on your shoes. (I almost think that they make us take of our shoes so that we cannot catch them, I have also learned to put my most likely bag to trigger screening on the belt last). Watch as the TSO opens compartments (if you know where they went with your bag), digs through your bags, picks up expensive equipment and then almost drops it, banging equipment against each other, try to shove everything back into the bag while scratching and denting it, giving you "respect my authority" looks when you tell them "this bag and everything in it costs $5,000 so please be a little bit more careful with it".

Europe: When my bag triggers screening their security stands next to it and attempts to locate the owner. After they find me they ask me to carry it to the secondary screening table. They ask me to open the compartments. They ask me to remove equipment. They ask me to manipulate the equipment (please take the lens off the camera, please take the cap of this, please open this container). They ask me questions about some of my equipment (most often "Why is there a countdown timer attached to these metal pipes?"). They are very direct and straightforwards with their requests/commands, but I have never encoundered what I would consider rude. And I can also honestly say that I don't think I ever had a European lay a finger on any of my equipment.

That could be perceived as making the checkpoint experience as calmer and less distracting. The security eunuchs at the moat...

It's curious to me why infrequent travelers would have much of anything to say about screening in the U.S. given nil basis for comparison. I am wondering where one might find this outpouring of opinion?

I am disgusted that any thinking adult would consider this necessary. Those poor kids are going to grow up afraid of their own shadows.