Mustang accident

[winny]

Originally Posted by IamNotDavid

No, video of aircraft crashing into the ground is definitely bad. There is no way to paint a smiley face on that pig.

That happens a quite lot. Commercial, private, Military - Planes crash.

Originally Posted by IamNotDavid

You can stand by it all you want, but you're still wrong. 1/47 is not a "freak" event.

It is a freak accident, it's never happened before, 1/47 is misleading, it's too small a number. You could theoretically have 100 more Reno air races and it never happen again.

You really want to know how much of a freak then work it out. Assuming it was caused by the trim tab failing.
You'll need,
the probability of the same failiure happening again.
the probability of it happening at the same point in the race, (so you'll need to know what percentage of the race is run directly in front of the crowd)
the probability of the same result from the failiure (we already know that this happened to P-51 'voodoo chile' and the result was he went up to 9,000 feet, not into the crowd)
Then add all these together. That's the probability of it happening again.
It's an enormous number.
So again, how is it not a freak accident? None of the other deaths were caused by the same set of circumstances. You're assuming all deaths have the same cause, they don't.

The deaths are the result not the cause, you can't measure the result and then use it as an argument for cause.