A $19 million airplane crash simulator reveals why evacuations fail: most passengers ignore safety briefings, freeze when told to move, or stay seated. Only 1-2% actually listen to the safety demo. The evacuation took just over two minutes, far too long when seconds matter.
Command emergency. Command emergency.
One at a time! Get under the smoke! Breathe through your clothes!
This $19 million simulator is as near as these people will ever get to being in a plane crash without leaving the ground. So we just had an evacuation. If this were a real-life horrible situation, how would people have fared? Would everyone have survived?
Probably not. They didn't follow instructions. If it had been a worst-case scenario and the flight attendants were incapacitated— Oh, man.
—there are people that would not have Before the emergency, we fitted the simulator with cameras to record precisely how these regular flyers behave in emergency situations. Let's rerun the footage to see exactly what people did wrong.
Bend over, heads down! Bend over, heads down! Bend over, heads down!
They weren't bracing in the proper positions.
Release seat belts. Sit and slide. Cross your arms.
We have people that brought things with them, and it gets in the way.
Get under the smoke.
When you're trying to get people out of this opening, I don't need suitcases in the way.
There was— there was a woman back there who totally froze.
She did.
Get out. Get out.
Get out. And even when she was being told, get out, release seat belts, get out, she wasn't doing it.
Yeah. The instructions we get from flight attendants seem simple enough, so why don't people get things right?
They don't listen. When we tell them, they don't listen. Right.
If people had paid more attention to the safety instructions, could we have saved more lives?
Absolutely.
We timed the passengers to see how long it took them to exit, and they clocked a time just over 2 minutes. Every second counts here, and that's too long. Go, go, go! Get out! Get out! The problem here is really simple. Passengers just don't remember the safety instructions. Get out! Get out! To them, the instructions sounded like those adults in Charlie Brown. Wa wa wa wa wa.
Please follow along with us as we demonstrate the safety features. I listen to the first few seconds, and then my mind goes elsewhere. Mask over your nose and mouth, and then pull the white elastic over your head.
I've heard it all before. I'm reading my magazine and listening to music, so I don't pay attention.
Insert the metal fitting into the buckle.
A lot of passengers don't feel that safety instructions would be beneficial to them.
Please stow those large.
Probably figure if we're going to be thousands of feet in the air. We're pretty much gonna die.
And welcome aboard. It's a constant battle. I would say that 1 to 2% pay attention to any of the safety information.
