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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> And if the impact on the environment and on quality of life aren’t enough to spur action, consider the security risks. Each day, hundreds of tourists are recruited off the street, whisked past a light security “wanding,” with no X-ray machine or background check, and loaded onto an idling helicopter with no barrier between passenger and pilot. These helicopters then fly within 1,000 feet of the most densely populated urban area in the country.

Seriously, can we please stop abusing "terrorism fear" in each and every discussion? This is precisely what terrorists want.

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I don't think they personally believe this, rather they are using it as a way to further their agenda which is to reduce helicopters in the air. Basically it's an opportunistic excuse.

This is important and largely true. There is, occasionally, a real terrorist threat. I personally am maybe too cynical and tune most shit like this out as utter bullshit. So we are creating a boy who cried wolf problem in addition to anti-factual fear mongering.

Agreed. The chance of terrorism is very small...

Although, I think it's just a matter of time until there is some kind of accident that'll bring a lot more focus onto the industry.

Back in 2009 there was a midair collision [1] between a tour helicopter and a private plane which sadly killed 9 people. If I remember right, there was some simple steps done to try to improve safety in the Hudson corridor, but nothing that really slowed down the growth of the industry.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Hudson_River_mid-air_coll...

There was a single aircraft tourist flight crash with fatalities in 2011 as well:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/sydney-woman-dead-after-chopper-...

(Which I only know about because one of the passengers ran a great tapas bar just up the street from my place...)

We could also stop the "this is what terrorists want". They usually want a caliphate or an independent Northern Elbonia, not scare you into avoiding tourist attractions.

They want you to be afraid. Without fear, terrorism is a useless military strategy.

Without fear terrorism is a perfectly serviceable strategy. All terrorists need to do is create enough disruption to make it cheaper to give them what they want. IRA would often issue warnings about their attacks.

> All terrorists need to do is create enough disruption to make it cheaper to give them what they want.

They won't get what they want because of something that happened, but rather because of the fear of it happening again. So yes, fear.

How about the thousands of uninspected cargo containers arriving every day?

Why would someone bother with a helicopter when they can just ship in a dirty bomb?

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