Safety Santa Myth?

I flew to Joburg this week with my two sons, one of whom is a panic pants, he listens to and watches the safety video avidly, he then wicks out the safety sheet in the seat pocket in front of him and studies it like he is going to be examined by St Peter at the gates. I look around the airplane and it occurs to me that he is the only person who actually listened to the safety talk.
He undoes his seatbelt and scrabbles around under his seat to check if his life jacket is there – my patience is wearing thin and I snap at him to get up off the floor and sit down. He insists that he needs to check if his life vest is there. I insist that we are not flying over any water so he will not need it.
We go back and forth with this ridiculous debate.
All the while I am thinking…..
It takes them days to find the black box if a plane crashes.
If the news footage is to be believed there is a minuscule amount of debris floating around in the ocean.
Doesn’t ever seem to be a single survivor, I am not sure there is even a fully intact body to be had?
So why do we bother with that safety talk that airlines want me to listen to even if I am a frequent flyer?
Never in the history of anything I have ever seen or heard of plane accidents has there been a picture of twenty or so shoeless, bag-less people rowing about in the slide which turns into a boat with their life vests securely fastened?
In fact I would like to know for my safety, so that I can make an educated decision what the real chances of anyone surviving if a 737 smokes in?
It is clearly a man that writes the copy for the safety talk, tell a mother to secure her mask before coming to the aid of her child……really?
Separate people from their laptop bags and women from their handbag – not happening.
Of course we have all seen people get on and off planes under completely normal circumstances imagine what it would be like if there was some panic thrown in – needless to say some idiot would definitely think their closest exit was in the wrong direction!
I would really like the airlines not to bother, with the life vests, the rubber slide / raft, the leaflet in the seat pocket in front of me, the oxygen bag that will not inflate and the emergency exits, the floor lighting for my additional safety as we all stampede toward the exit that could be behind us. I am especially suspicious of the brace position and see my neck being snapped with hangman like precision.
I go for the seatbelt – but only because I don’t want to have the top of my head stoved in like a boiled egg if the plane drops and we don’t actually go spiraling towards our certain deaths. Outside of that the whole lot is a waste of time and money – I would happily trade it all for an extra person at the check in counter.
All of this flashes through my mind as my son asks yet again why he cant check for his life vest, I snap again because he will not ever ever need it – when he asks why I resist saying because we will all be dead before you can locate the whistle or the mini flash light and instead say because the plane is not going to crash.
Did I mention that my son is seven?