Thursday, June 14, 2018

Do FAA drone regulations illustrate the tradeoff between Type I and Type II errors?

I use the book The Economics of Public Issues in my micro classes. Chapter 1 is called "Death by Bureaucrat." It discusses how the Food and Drug Administration can make either a Type I error or a Type II error.

Type I error: The FDA approves a drug before enough testing is done and when people take it, there are harmful side effects.

Type II error: The FDA tests a drug longer than necessary to stay on the safe side. But people might suffer because the drug is not yet available. 80,000 people died waiting for Septra to be approved.

The FDA would rather make a Type II error because the public can blame the FDA if a Type I error occurs.

Something similar might be going on withe the FAA. See Science panel says the FAA is too tough on drones by David Koenig of the Associated Press. Excerpts:
"Science advisers to the federal government say safety regulators are hindering the spread of commercial drones by being too cautious about the risks posed by the flying machines.

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine said in a report Monday that federal safety regulators need to balance the overall benefits of drones instead of treating them the same way that they oversee airliners.

Academy experts said in a strongly worded report that the Federal Aviation Administration tilts against proposals for commercial uses of unmanned aircraft without considering their potential to reduce other risks and save lives.

For example, they said, when drones are used to inspect cell-phone towers, it reduces the risk of making workers climb up the towers.

The study on the FAA’s work on integrating drones into the nation’s airspace was requested by Congress last year."

"The high-level science board said that the FAA was making “overly conservative risk assessments” about drones by applying the same near-zero tolerance for risk that it uses with other aircraft.

“In many cases, the focus has been on ‘What might go wrong?’ instead of a holistic risk picture” that considers overall risk and benefit, the advisers wrote."

"“The committee concluded that ‘fear of making a mistake’ drives a risk culture at the FAA that is too often overly conservative, particularly with regard to (drone) technologies, which do not pose a direct threat to human life in the same way as technologies used in manned aircraft,” the board experts wrote.

They said that FAA staffers may believe they could endanger their careers by allowing any new risk."

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