Why Air Travel in the United States is so Safe

This might be hard to imagine if you weren’t there, but in the 1960s and early ’70s, many American airports had kiosks and vending machines selling flight insurance. Companies like Mutual of Omaha, Tele-Trip, and others installed coin-and-bill-operated machines near boarding gates and ticket counters. Passengers would fill out a card naming their beneficiary, feed it some coins, and the machine dispensed a policy that paid out if they were killed or injured as the result of a crash (and expired as soon as the plane landed safely). These days, airline accidents are rare enough that grim novelties like this no longer exist.