Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 66 of 171
Plane crashes as chains of unlikely events
do not share Kurzweil’s faith in the reliability of even these safety-critical systems. He is correct in implying that humans are primarily responsible for most airplane accidents. The software on modern commercial airplanes is probably the most reliable software ever written. However, it is not foolproof and in fact may be decreasing in reliability because of the hardware on which it runs—which I will get to shortly. However, it is simplistic to say that airplane accidents are caused by either humans or the automation. Most airplane crashes37 are caused by a series of unlikely events that the normal redundant safety procedures, both automated and human, are unable to catch.