If you enjoyed this, there’s a really great chapter along the same lines in the book Outliers. It describes how cultural differences can be blamed for some airplane disasters. The pilots from more timid cultures won’t say what they mean, for fear of offending, while our American air traffic controllers assume someone running out of fuel would mention that, loudly. It’s a fun read.
You are correct about aircraft disasters. Several years ago, I had a discussion with an engineer from Boeing regarding aircraft egress systems. When they test the systems and time them, they obviously use an optimum test bank of candidates who are knowledgeable on the system and engineers want to minimize the time for certification purposes. He said while the times published for complete evacuation are never that good in practice, they generally did apply for a “Western passenger base.” Explaining further, he said a European passenger base would use a pretty much orderly egress, even in a full blown emergency, and this is based on the general behavior of the passengers. Not so with other populations. In fact, a Saudi airliner had a relatively small aircraft fire once that should have allowed most to egress before there was loss of life. But, because these people panicked and literally stepped all over one another and then fought each other during the emergency, there was massive loss of life.
Thanks for the referral.